Multidimensional Pain Inventory-Screening Chinese version (MPI-sC): psychometric testing in terminal cancer patients in Taiwan.
BACKGROUND
Cancer pain is identified as a multidimensional experience, but relatively few brief instruments are available for assessing the complex pain-related experiences of terminal cancer patients in Taiwan. The purposes of this study were to (1) translate and examine the feasibility and psychometric characteristics of the eight-item Multidimensional Pain Inventory-Screening Chinese (MPI-sC) when used with patients having terminal cancer and (2) apply the MPI-sC to examine multidimensional pain-related experiences of terminal cancer patients in Taiwan.


METHODS
The MPI-sC was tested in 106 terminal cancer inpatients at a hospice setting in Taipei.


RESULTS
The results showed that the MPI-sC has satisfactory face and content validity, feasibility, acceptable internal consistency reliability (overall Cronbach's alpha of 0.75), and overall support of theoretical assumptions. However, instead of the four-factor structure of the original instrument, we found a three-factor structure (with pain intensity and pain interference merged into one factor) that explained 76.73% of the variance. Close to half the patients (48.1%) had considerable levels of pain interference, and a majority (72.6%) reported not having control in life based on the cut-point of MPI-sC categorization.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results support the brief MPI-sC as a feasible and valid tool for assessing and representing multidimensional pain experiences in terminal cancer patients. The MPI-sC could help clinicians and researchers assess the complex multidimensional pain experiences of terminal cancer patients, including Chinese-speaking cancer populations.
Lai
Yeur-Hur
YH
Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, 1 Jen-Ai Rd., Sec. 1, Taipei, 100, Taiwan. laiyhwk@ntu.edu.tw
Guo
Shu-Liu
SL
Keefe
Francis J
FJ
Tsai
Li-Yun
LY
Shun
Shiow-Ching
SC
Liao
Yu-Chien
YC
Li
In-Fun
IF
Liu
Ching-Ping
CP
Lee
Yun-Hsiang
YH
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D017051:Hospice Care / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000150:complications*; D010146:Pain / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013624:Taiwan; D055815:Young Adult