Validation of the Chronic Pain Coping Inventory

The Chronic Pain Coping Inventory. (CPCI; Jensen, M.P., Turner, J.A., Roman o, J.M. and Strom, S.E., The Chronic Pain Coping Inventory: development and preliminary validation, Pain, 60 (1995) 203-216) is a recently developed q uestionnaire comprising eight main subscales that measure coping; strategie s that are frequently targeted for change in interdisciplinary pain treatme nt programs. Preliminary research, carried out by the developers of the CPC I, supports the reliability and validity of the scale. The purpose of the p resent study was to further examine the validity of the CPCI independently. In the present study, 210 patients were administered the CPCI, along with the Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CSQ; Rosenstiel, A.K. and Keefe, F.J., The use of coping strategies in low back pain patients: relationship to pa tient characteristics and current adjustment, Pain, 17 (1983) 33-44; Riley III, J.L. and Robinson, M.E., CSQ: five factors or fiction? Clin. J. Pain, 13 (1997) 156-162), and the Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI; Kerns, R. D., Turk, D.C. and Rudy, T.E., The West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain In ventory (WHYMPI), Pain, 23 (1985) 345-356) as part of a pre-admission scree ning. Principal components analysis with oblique rotation was performed on the 61 main CPCI scale items. An eight-factor solution was identified as mo st appropriate. The original subscales were generally supported, however, s ome modifications to scoring of subscales were suggested. As a second step in the study, the relationship between the modified CPCI subscales and the CSQ subscales were examined and their relative ability to predict concurren t adjustment to pain (MPI subscales) was assessed. Results indicated that C PCI subscales tap coping constructs that are conceptually different than th e CSQ subscales. Several CPCI subscales were also found to be significantly and uniquely related to measures of concurrent adjustment, even after taki ng CSQ subscales and demographic and pain-related variables into account. T hese results suggest the CPCI is a valuable tool, above and beyond establis hed coping measures, in the clinical assessment and research of pain. Direc tions for future research are discussed. (C) 1999 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier Science B.V.