title: Children's fear during procedural pain: preliminary investigation of the Children's Fear Scale.
abstract: Many children consider getting a needle to be one of their most feared and painful experiences. Differentiating between a child's experience of fear and pain is critical to appropriate intervention. There is no gold standard one-item self-report measure of fear for use with children.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To conduct an initial investigation of the psychometric properties of the Children's Fear Scale (CFS; based on the adult Faces Anxiety Scale) with young school-age children.
  
  
  METHODS
  Children and their parents were filmed during venipuncture and completed pain and fear ratings immediately after the procedure (n = 100) and 2 weeks later (n = 48). Behavioral coding of the procedures was conducted.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Support was found for interrater reliability (Time 1: rs = .51, p < .001) and test-retest reliability (rs = .76, p < .001) of the CFS for measuring children's fear during venipuncture. Assessment of construct validity revealed high concurrent convergent validity with another self-report measure of fear (Time 1: rs = .73, p < .001) and moderate discriminant validity (e.g., Time 1: rs = -.30, p < .005 with child coping behavior; rs = .41, p < .001 with child distress behavior).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The CFS holds promise for measuring pain-related fear in children. In addition to further investigation into the psychometric properties of the CFS during acute pain with a wider age range, future research could validate this measure in other contexts. The utility of a one-item measure of fear extends beyond the field of pediatric pain to other contexts including intervention for anxiety disorders and children in hospital.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario. cmcmurtr@uoguelph.ca
authors.forename: C Meghan
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: McMurtry
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Noel
authors.forename: Christine T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Chambers
authors.forename: Patrick J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: McGrath
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009339:Needles; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D018962:Phlebotomy / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results