SCALING THE AFFECTIVE DOMAIN OF PAIN - A STUDY OF THE DIMENSIONALITY OF VERBAL DESCRIPTORS

This study evaluated the multidimensional structure of affective verba l descriptors and investigated individual differences in the scaling o f the descriptors. Patients with chronic low back pain, chronic headac he and rheumatoid arthritis (25 per group) and 25 control subjects, ma tched for age and sex, made similarity judgements of a set of 12 verba l descriptors, e.g., awful, miserable. They also completed the Coping Strategies Questionnaire, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, M cGill Pain Questionnaire Short Form, and a measure of verbal intellige nce. The similarity data were subjected to individual differences mult idimensional scaling (ALSCAL) and the resulting subject weights were r elated to group membership and the questionnaire data. The multidimens ional nature of affective descriptors was confirmed. A 4-dimensional s olution was identified: the first 3 dimensions were comparable with pr evious findings and labeled Tolerability, Focus of Attention and Minor Emotional Reaction. The 4th dimension was enigmatic and attributable to the back pain group. There were significant differences between the groups in their weighting of the dimensions and in their self-reporte d coping strategies. The results are discussed with reference to an ea rlier study and the degree of consistency across the studies is noted. Implications of the results for the conceptualisation and measurement of the affective domain of pain report are outlined.