| Author: | Liu, Yat-wa Justina |
| Title: | The psychometric properties of pain intensity verbal rating scale-Chinese (PIVRS-C) |
| Degree: | M.Sc. |
| Year: | 2001 |
| Subject: | Pain -- Measurement Chinese -- China -- Hong Kong Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Multi-disciplinary Studies Department of Nursing and Health Sciences |
| Pages: | viii, 91 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Background: Most of the commonly used pain assessment tools in local clinical areas were developed in the West and there are few researches that verified the psychometric properties of these tools on Chinese. The interpretation and expression of pain are closely related to individual's cultural background. Thus, the pain assessment tools developed in the West may not be able to reflect the pain experience in Chinese population. In view of this, the Pain Intensity Verbal Rating Scale - Chinese (PIVRS-C) was constructed by Chung, Wong, Yang, and Wong (1999) for pain assessment - the descriptors used in PIVRS-C were obtained by a cross-sectional descriptive survey on commonly used pain descriptors among Hong Kong Chinese. Before it can be used in clinical settings, it is necessary to establish its psychometric properties. Therefore, the objective of this study is to verify its psychometric properties. Method: This is a correlational comparative study. Fifty Hong Kong Chinese adults were recruited. Mechanical experimental pain was used in this study and it was produced by a pain source generator (Precision Pain Source, PPS-3). Four levels of pain stimulation (i.e. 350g, 550g, 750g and 950g) were applied to the subject's proximal interphalangeal joint at middle and index finger at random sequences. The subjects were then requested to rate their pain intensity using PIVRS-C and visual analogue scale (VAS). Results: In order to verify the consistency of VAS and PIVRS-C, test and retest reliability were applied in this study and the duration between the two tests was around five to seven days. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to estimate the test and retest reliability between the two scales. The ICC ranged from 0.78 to 0.90 which indicated good reliability. Factor analysis was used to investigate the validity of VAS and PIVRS-C and to assess their unidimensionality (i.e. intensity of pain). In each of these analyses, a single factor emerged. The large first eigenvalues of each matrix was 3.42, 3.24, 3.17 and 3.29 for 350g, 550g, 750g and 950g level of pain respectively. It could be concluded that both VAS and PIVRS-C were measuring the same dimension in pain (i.e. intensity). The high correlation coefficient showed that there was good positive correlation between the two scales in the first test (r = 0.92 , p < 0.001) and in the retest (r = 0.91, p < 0.001). However, the range of VAS score corresponding to each PIVRS-C category was wide. Conclusion: The two scales have a similar degree of reliability and validity for measuring subjective pain intensity in Chinese adults. However, PIVRS-C has advantages over other pain intensity scales. 1) it is cultural relevance for Hong Kong Chinese, 2) it improves local health professionals' understanding of the pain experience among local adult patients, 3) it provides more level of discrimination of a pain experience compared with the 5-point VRS, 4) it is simple to administer, easy to score and easily understood by patients. In conclusion, all types of pain assessment tools have their strengths and weakness. The selection of pain tools should consider the measurement situation and the nature of the patients' characteristic. It is expected that the results of this study will provide more choices in pain tools. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
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| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b15548715.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 2.84 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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