Development of categorial rating scale about pain intensity

Won, Chang Won; Yang, Dong Hoon; Kim, Seong Hoon; Kim, Byung Sung; Choi, Hyun Rim

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Categorial rating scale about pain intensity has been used in many studies without any validation. So we tried to score the pain intensity of phrases which Koreans commonly use for description of pain intensity, and developed categorial rating scale about pain intensity.
METHODS
After gathering the phrases which Koreans commonly use for description of pain intensity, the authors selected 23 common phrases. For the each 23 phrase, we asked 69 outpatients at a Family Medicine clinic and 76 hospital employee to check on the visual analogue scale according to the intensity. To estimate the reliability of the answers, we asked them to respond to the same questionnaire two weeks later.
RESULTS
Of 145 people interviewed, 63 were male and 82 were female. We found out the absolute pain intensity of 23 phrases. Then we could present 5 point categorial rating scale and 4 point categorial rating scale. Correlation coefficients of two weeks test retest were from 0.355 to 0.570, which were all statistically significant.
CONCLUSION
We developed 5 point categorial rating scale and 4 point categorial rating scale which can be used for evaluation of Korean's pain intensity.