Paper
Thursday, July 22, 2004
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Thursday, July 22, 2004
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
This presentation is part of : Posters I
The Psychometric Properties of Pain Intensity Verbal Rating Scales-Chinese (PIVRS-C)
Justina Y. W. Liu, RN, MSC, Joanne W.Y. Chung, RN, PhD, and Thomas K. S. Wong, RN, PhD. School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Background: Culture and language have an essential effect on pain assessment. Most pain scales, however, used for assessing Chinese pain were directly translated from western versions. Pain scales developed in the West may not be able to reflect the pain experience among Chinese. Therefore, the C-PIVRS was constructed in consideration of unique Chinese cultural characteristics.

Objective: This study investigates the psychometric properties of the Chinese pain intensity verbal rating scales (C-PIVRS).

Design: This is a correlation comparative study.

Sampling: Fifty Chinese speaking subjects were recruited by using convenience sampling.

Method: Mechanical experimental pain was used to produce four levels of pain stimulation on subjects°¦ interphalangeal joints at random sequences. The subjects than rated their pain intensity on both the C-PIVRS and the Visual Analog Scale (VAS). The pain scores obtained from both scales were compared for satisfactory level of reliability and validity. Test / re-test were employed to verify consistency of the two pain scales.

Findings: A consistency can be proved be the test / re-test correlation coefficient of the two pain scales (i.e. r = 0.92 for C-PIVRS and r = 0.91 for VAS). A good reliability can be shown by the intra-class correlation (ICC) which ranged from 0.78 to 0.90. In the factor analysis, a single factor emerged in each analysis. The first eigen values of each matrix were 3.42, 3.24, 3.17, and 3.29 for each level of experimental pain stimulation. This indicated that both pain scales were assessing the same pain dimension in terms of good validity.

Conclusion: The two pain scales have a comparable level of reliability and validity for assessing pain intensity in Chinese adults.

Implication: The selection of pain scales should consider the nature of the clients°¦ characteristics. The results of this study provide more choices in pain tools for assessing Chinese pain.

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Sigma Theta Tau International
July 22-24, 2004