A Preliminary Study for Development of a Pain Questionnaire

통증 평가도구 개발을 위한 기초조사

The present study was designed to investigate the general characteristics of pain patients and to analyze the properties of Korean pain expression terms as a preliminary step in the development of a pain questionnaire. Questionnaires were administered to 73 adult patients (53 males, 20 females) with knee, ankle, neck, low back, and shoulder pain. The mean duration of pain was 16.2 months (SE=3.3). The results were as fellows : 1. The data show that there are over 30 words in the Korean language to describe the varieties of pain experience even within this small sample. 2, There was low significant relationship between present pain intensity using visual analogue scale and the selected numbers of pain words from the pain questionnaire (p<.01). 3. In order to separate basic factors, a principal component analysis with varimax rotation was performed. The principal component analysis produced 8 factors. The proportion of variance explained by these factors was $71.0\%$. The first factor accounting $26.8\%$ of the variance was labeled 'cruelty and fear related pain' ; second 'pain produced from deep tissue' : third 'skin-punctuating related pain' ; and fourth 'miscellaneous and complicated pain'. Results of this study might be utilitzed in developing a pain questionnaire for pain patients.