Review of the psychological literature on assessment instruments used with pain patients.

This study reports recent trends in research of the major psychological assessment instruments used with pain patients. An analysis of PsycINFO, from 2000 to 2005, showed that the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) was most popular in the literature, followed by the Beck Depression Inventory, the West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory and the Coping Strategies Questionnaire. Reliance on these may largely be a function of ease of use, administration and scoring. The popularity of the MPQ might be based on its ability to measure cognitive, emotional, and sensory aspects of pain.

Pain is an integral aspect of the human experience and a central component in the field of medicine, nursing, clinical psychology, rehabilitation, and natural healing (Gatchel & Weisberg, 2000). However, the specific study of the assessment and evaluation of pain and related pain syndromes has only been evident since the early 1970s (Mikail, DuBreuil, & D'Eon, 1993; Turk & Melzack, 2001). Piotrowski (1998) reported on the top 10 assessment instruments used by practicing psychologists in the evaluation of pain patients. Although these studies identify the most popular measures in the field, little is known about the extent of published research on individual assessment instruments. To address this issue, this investigation examines the number of studies indexed in the database PsycINFO, from August 2000 to August 2005; the list of tests was selected from those noted by Piotrowski (1998) and several highly recommended measures used in the study of treatment outcome of pain patients (see Okifuji & Turk, 2001). The search strategy combined each instrument with the key descriptor pain to determine research output.

Performing an analysis of research output in the published literature can provide informative data for researchers (e.g., What tests have garnered the most research attention? What is the extent of published studies on highly marketed or popular tests in clinical usage?) Moreover, knowledge about the research emphasis of selected tests could have a bearing on issues such as psychometric credibility (Reynolds & Sundberg, 1976) or acceptance under the Frye/Daubert standards in legal settings (Piotrowski, 2007). Practical applications could include editorial decisions on test coverage in assessment texts or degree of emphasis on select tests in graduate training (Piotrowski & Belter, 1999). Lastly, PsycINFO was the database of choice for the current analysis since it is considered the foremost bibliographic source of scholarly literature in the behavioral sciences and health psychology, including all official APA journals and major texts in the field (Baxter, 1993; Piotrowski & Perdue, 1999).

Table 1 shows the rank order of the top 14 tests and measures based on the amount of 'hits' obtained in the online search. The results indicate that several standard tests such as the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et al., 1961) and MMPI-2 (Hathaway & McKinley, 1989) are frequently used in studies on pain. However, the McGill Pain Questionnaire (Melzack, 1975) was far and away the top-ranked instrument. The WHYMPI (Kerns et al., 1985) and the Coping Strategies Questionnaire (Rosenstriel & Keefe, 1983) were also quite popular. Perhaps researchers rely on the most frequently used measures due to the relatively easy administration, format, and scoring protocol of these instruments (see Bernt, 1991). Another reason might be that the most popular tests are most likely to provide a basis for comparison. For example, if a researcher is interested in assessing pain in schizophrenics, and would like to compare scores with other studies that have done likewise, the odds of finding such a previous study are much greater if one uses the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) or the Beck Depression Inventory than the Box Rating Scale. Moreover, the extensive extant research on the psychometric credibility of the most popular tests provides a solid basis for clinical use. Furthermore, reliance on the MPQ may be a function of its ability to assess cognitive, emotional, and sensory components of pain (Mikail et al., 1993, p.119). These findings indicate that the most popular instruments used cl inical ly wi th pain pat ients also garner the most research attention (Andrasik, Piotrowski, Packard, & Oyama, 1989; Piotrowski & Lubin, 1990).

REFERENCES

Andrasik, F., Piotrowski, C., Packard, R.C., & Oyama, O.N. (1989). Psychological testing patterns: A survey of headache clinicians. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Headache, Boston.

Baxter, P.M. (1993). Psychology: A guide to reference and information sources. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.