Abstract
Objectives: To review limitations of various single-item and multi-item scales of pain measurement and suggest remedial actions for better use of them leading to a meaningful comparison of patients and groups of patients in terms of pain scores across time and space. Method: Stages to obtain the proposed score of a single item scale are: (1) Item Raw scores (2) Equidistant scores (3) Normalized equidistant scores (4) Conversion to the desired score range. For multi-item scale, further stages are (5) Summation of normalized equidistant scores with the desired score range. For the transition from one stage to the next stage, the method described along with empirical verification of transformation for an item to help clinicians to understand the main features of the proposed methods of scoring and to use them effectively. Results: The proposed method resulted in continuous, monotonic scores satisfying equidistant and normality conditions with the desired score range. Normalized equidistant scores help to compare patients’ scores from different distributions and facilitate the application of statistical techniques in a parametric setup. Conclusions: Proposed scores reflect the intensity of pain by continuous variable satisfying equidistant property. Normality, help meaningful comparison in terms of pain intensity, change in pain intensity, and drawing the path of progress for better prognostication. It is possible to compute split-half reliability and theoretical reliability as ratios of true score variance and observed score variance. Future studies suggested.
Recommended Citation
Chakrabartty, Satyendra Narth
(2020)
"Improve Quality of Pain Measurement,"
Health Sciences: Vol. 1
:
Iss.
1
, Article 2.
Available at:
https://doi.org/10.15342/hs.2020.259
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
