Perceived spouse responsiveness to chronic pain: Three empirical subgroups

The spouse plays a fundamental role in day-to-day functioning and long-term well-being of the patient with chronic pain. Although spouses may respond differently to pain demonstrations, no study has examined patterns of perce ived spouse responsiveness to chronic pain behavior. Yet perceived patterns of response to chronic pain may explain variability in pain behavior in th e literature because studied samples may be drawn from any one subgroup. Th e purposes of this study were to run an exploratory cluster analysis to ide ntify naturally occurring spouse response subgroups by using section 2 of t he Multidimensional Pain Inventory and to examine pain-relevant variables b etween subgroups. It was hypothesized that subgroups would be identified an d that they would differ on pain-relevant variables. Participants were 774 married pain patients from 2 University of Florida-affiliated pain clinics, 69% of whom experienced chronic low back pain. A hierarchical cluster anal ysis identified 3 subgroups that were labeled positively attentive, negativ ely attentive, and inattentive. A discriminant analysis yielded 2 significa nt discriminant functions that correctly classified 71.1% of subgroup membe rship. The support variable best differentiated between the positively and negatively attentive subgroups, whereas interference best distinguished bet ween the negatively attentive and inattentive subgroups. Results suggest th e profiles have conceptual and clinical validity, with the negatively and p ositively attentive subgroups exhibiting the poorest adjustment to pain. A controlled study is needed to determine the direction of causality. (C) 200 1 by the American Pain Society.