Measuring pain phenomena after spinal cord injury: Development and psychometric properties of the SCI-QOL Pain Interference and Pain Behavior assessment tools

This paper describes the creation and testing of new questionnaires to measure how pain affects life and behavior after a spinal cord injury (SCI). These are called the SCI-QOL Pain Interference item bank and the SCI-QOL Pain Behavior scale. The questionnaires were developed by talking to people with SCI and SCI specialists, then tested with a large group of individuals with SCI. The questionnaires were refined to ensure they accurately measured pain interference and behavior specifically for the SCI population. The resulting questionnaires can be used to better understand and assess pain in individuals with SCI, and to track the effectiveness of pain treatments. The SCI-QOL Pain Interference item bank is available as a computer adaptive test or short form.

• 1
  The SCI-QOL Pain Interference item bank and the SCI-QOL Pain Behavior scale demonstrated robust psychometric properties.
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  Confirmatory factor analyses confirmed that each set of items was unidimensional, and item response theory analyses were used to estimate slopes and thresholds for the items.
• 3
  The SCI-QOL Pain Interference item bank is available as a computer adaptive test or short form for research and clinical applications, and scores are transformed to the PROMIS metric.