This article focuses on the development of a valid, reliable and culturally sensitive instrument to assess the responses and management of Chinese primary caregivers caring for children aged below 10 with minor upper respiratory disorders. Thirty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted as the point of saturation of qualitative data was reached. The qualitative findings contributed to the development of the instrument items. Five main categories and 29 sub-categories were identified with satisfactory inter-coder reliability. A panel of three experts judged the content validity of the instrument with a content validity index of 0.98. A test-retest procedure with 40 subjects was adopted and the correlation coefficient for the instrument was 0.850 (p< or =0.000).