A comprehensive review of questionnaires to evaluate chronic pain- related disability

This article reviews standard disability questionnaires available for measuring pain-related disability and considers the psychometric evidence to support their use. These questionnaires can be a desirable method for documenting the status and progress of patients with chronic pain. Disability questionnaires were identified from searches of MEDLINE and PsychLIT from 1980 to 1995 and from bibliography reviews. Questionnaires were classified according to whether they evaluated disability in terms of health status, functional assessment, pain, or a specific condition (e.g., back pain, rheumatologic disorders, cancer, other). They were reviewed for conventional psychometric attributes of reliability and validity, in addition to feasibility. Most studies provide some evidence of construct validity for questionnaires, but there are widely differing content domains, suggesting that consensual definitions of pain-related disability have not been developed. It is difficult to establish criterion validity without defined standards of disability to calibrate questionnaire sensitivity. Normative data and information about feasibility are usually lacking. Close evaluation of psychometric attributes will help in obtaining more accurate and useful measurements of pain-related disability