Measuring the experience and perception of suffering.
OBJECTIVE
assess psychometric properties of scales developed to assess experience and perception of physical, psychological, and existential suffering in older individuals.


METHODS
scales were administered to 3 populations of older persons and/or their family caregivers: individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and their family caregivers (N = 105 dyads), married couples in whom 1 partner had osteoarthritis (N = 53 dyads), and African American and Hispanic caregivers of care recipients with AD (N = 121). Care recipients rated their own suffering, whereas caregivers provided ratings of perceived suffering of their respective care recipients. In addition, quality of life, health, and functional status data were collected from all respondents via structured in-person interviews.


RESULTS
three scales showed high levels of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity. The scales were able to discriminate differences in suffering as a function of type of disease, demonstrated high intra-person correlations and moderately high inter-person correlations and exhibited predicted patterns of association between each type of suffering and indicators of quality of life, health status, and caregiver outcomes of depression and burden.


CONCLUSIONS
suffering is an important but understudied domain. This article provides valuable tools for assessing the experience and perception of suffering in humans.
Schulz
Richard
R
Department of Psychiatry and UCSUR, University of Pittsburgh, 121 University Place, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. schulz@pitt.edu
Monin
Joan K
JK
Czaja
Sara J
SJ
Lingler
Jennifer H
JH
Beach
Scott R
SR
Martire
Lynn M
LM
Dodds
Angela
A
Hebert
Randy S
RS
Zdaniuk
Bozena
B
Cook
Thomas B
TB
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D010003:Osteoarthritis / Q000523:psychology*; D010465:Perception; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000592:standards; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States