The development of a self-report measure to assess the location and intensity of pain in people with intellectual disabilities.
The performance of a target group of 20 people with intellectual disability (ID) and a comparison group of 20 people who did not have ID was investigated on a series of tasks involving the judgement of the location of pain (on a bodymap) and the intensity of pain (on an analogue colour scale) in response to a series of photographs of simulated painful experiences. The results of the study indicated that: (1) there were no differences between the target and comparison groups in judging pain location for 93% of test items; (2) the performance of the target group in judging pain location was stable over time; (3) people with ID rated the pain images as more intense than the comparison group on all the 'mild' pain stimuli and 36% of the 'severe' pain stimuli; (4) the performance of the target group in judging pain intensity was logically consistent for 65% of comparisons (clear trends towards significance being apparent for a further 10% of items); (5) the performance of the target group in judging pain intensity was stable over time; and (6) the performance of the target group was unrelated to indicators of cognitive ability.
Bromley
J
J
Department of Clinical Psychology, Withington Hospital, Manchester, England.
Emerson
E
E
Caine
A
A
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results