This paper reports the development of a self-report instrument designed to assess pain in cancer and other diseases. It is argued that issues of reliability and validity should be considered for every pain questionnaire. Most research on measures of pain examine reliability to the relative neglect of validity concerns. The Wisconsin Brief Pain Questionnaire (BPQ) is evaluated with regard to both reliability and validity. Data from patients with cancer at 4 primary sites and from patients with rheumatoid arthritis suggest that the BPQ is sufficiently reliable and valid for research purposes. Additional methodological and theoretical issues related to validity are discussed, and the need for continuing evaluation of the BPQ and other measures of clinical pain is stressed.

The frequency, severity, and disruptiveness of pain related by 667 cancer patients are reported. The patients, all seen at a comprehensive cancer center, had cancers of the breast, colon and rectum, prostate, or various gynecologic sites. As expected, the proportion of patients with pain varied according to primary site and according to degree of progression of the disease. Pain, when present, was often of at least moderate severity and was felt to interfere with patients' activity and enjoyment of life to a moderate to severe extent. Degree of interference with activity and enjoyment of life was greater when the pain was caused by cancer than when it had another cause. Implications of these findings for professional and lay education and for treatment are discussed. Cancer 50:1913‐1918, 1982.

Pain researchers and clinicians alike are often troubled by a lack of correspondence between non-verbal behavior and patients' self-reports of level of pain. This paper discusses some of the variables which can effect the relationship between these measures. In addition, the paper reports on the reliability of nurses' observations of pain behavior and of their inferences about the intensity of a patient's pain. In general, though these observations and inferences have adequate reliability, the correspondence between such inferences and patients' reports of pain intensity are modest, though significant. Discrepancies between observers' and patients' ratings of pain are greater in a chronic pain sample (N = 37) than in an acute pain sample (N = 34). Theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

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and Siegel report the development of an observational scale to measure distress behavior in children with cancer. They discuss this scale as if it measured anxiety, but the scale probably reflects both anxiety and pain. The terms are difficult to distinguish, because they refer to constructs. Nevertheless, the distinction is important, because it may have both theoretical and clinical implications. Future research should build upon the work of Katz et al. by elaborating the theoretical definition of anxiety and pain and by using a somewhat altered rating methodology.