Validation of the Norwegian Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire

Abstract

Background and purposeThere is a large variation in people’s reactions to painful stimuli. Although some conditions are more painful, the variation between people is larger than the reaction to pain across conditions. Induced experimental pain is one way to assess some aspects of these differences in pain perception. Experimental nociceptive testing is time consuming and not always feasible in a clinical setting. In order to overcome the obstacles of assessing pain sensitivity using experimental stimulation, the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire (PSQ) was developed. The purpose of this study is to validate the Norwegian version of the PSQ.MethodsConstruct validity was examined through an exploratory principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. Internal consistency was measured by Cronbach’s alpha reliability for subscales and the total PSQ. As confounding variables such as age and gender may contribute to the experience of pain, a regression analysis was performed with demographic variables and PSQ scores as independent variables and the experimental measures of pain as the dependent variable.ResultsThe factor analysis yielded at two factor solution, with an eigenvalue greater than one, explain 58% of the variance. Cronbach’s alpha for the PSQ was 0.92. In the regression analysis, only PSQ scores contributed to explain the experimental pain intensity and tolerance. Gender only influenced the experimental pain threshold, as men had statistically significant higher heat pain threshold than women.ConclusionThis study shows that PSQ is a valid and reliable questionnaire and might be a promising instrument for assessing pain sensitivity in Norwegian clinical settings. Further studies are needed to examine whether the PSQ can be used in clinical settings to predict postoperative pain and the development of chronic pain.

Structural Consistency of the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire in the Cooperative Health Research In South Tyrol (CHRIS) Population-Based Study

“…8 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted with the principal component factor method, under the assumption of null uniquenesses, for guidance on factor retention and eigenvalue comparability with previous works. 23,38,48 Item uniquenesses were of similar size and within acceptable margins among the models explored (<.60 for 1-factor solution, <.40 for 2 or more factor solutions), with only minor exceptions. 36 Both orthogonal and oblique rotations were explored to reflect different perspectives on the data.…”

“…The identified PSQ structures overcome limitations of previous studies, which did not formally explore the incidental higher-order structure of the PSQ under the proposed 3-score system and did not assess structural consistency between genders. 23,32,38,48 Participants equally represented both genders, spanning the entire adult age range. Results were robust to the exclusion of participants with the presence of any chronic pain or reporting extreme values on the questionnaire.…”

“…The PSQ has been used in different clinical and population-based settings 16,[22][23][24][25][26][27]37,39,43 and is available in several languages. 3,23,27,32,43,48 The PSQ showed good test-retest reliability in healthy volunteers 38 and clinical samples with degenerative spinal disease. 23 PSQ-derived scores had moderate to good correlations with experimental pain testing in healthy young adults 38 and, outside the site of clinical pain, in patients with mixed chronic pain conditions.…”

“…38 Using the same methodology, a similar structure has also been observed in Korean patients 23 and in healthy volunteers. 48 However, no systematic exploratory identification of factors or confirmatory factor analysis has been conducted to date in support of the number of extracted factors and their contextual interrelationships, 27 except for a confirmatory 2-factor analysis conducted on a small Mandarin Chinese population. 32 Previous explorations of the PSQ psychometric properties were confined to samples of limited size and age range, with sparse application to population-based settings.…”

Validity of the cold pressor test and pain sensitivity questionnaire via online self-administration

“…A validation in chronic pain patients [16], and a separate English language validation of the PSQ [17] have been published. However, the cohort sizes from which stimulus response correlations with PSQ scores are published are limited (406 subjects in [16], 319 subjects in [18], 136 subjects in [17], 103 [19], 182 [20] and 331 [21]). More recently, Grundström et al (2019) demonstrated an association between PSQ total score and both temperature and pressure thresholds, not including the CPT, in a sample of 37 women with persistent pelvic pain and 55 control women, though associations were notably stronger in the chronic pain subgroup [22].…”