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A detailed discussion of adherence in asthma is beyond the scope of this article. It is intuitively obvious that adherence (defined as the extent to which a patient’s behaviour coincides with medical advice) is of paramount importance to the effectiveness of any form of intervention. Evidence suggests that nonadherence with asthma medication is endemic, with approximately 50% of subjects being nonadherent , and that physicians are poor and biased at predicting adherence. No predictable association exists between personality factors and adherence, and there is no single set of characteristics to assist clinicians in recognizing those individuals at risk of nonadherence. The reliability of patient self-reported adherence depends on the type of response; low self-reported compliance is highly reliable, while high self-reported compliance is unreliable.