Is the Latent Structure of Fear of Pain Continuous or Discontinuous Among Pain Patients? Taxometric Analysis of the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale (original) (raw)

Development of the Fear of Pain Questionnaire-III

Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 1998

Fear and/or anxiety about pain is a useful construct, in both theoretical and clinical terms. This article describes the development and refinement of the Fear of Pain Questionnaire (FPQ), which exists in its most current form as the FPQ-III. Factor analytic refinement resulted in a 30-item FPQ-III which consists of Severe Pain, Minor Pain, and Medical Pain subscales. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the FPQ-III were found to be good. Four studies are presented, including normative data for samples of inpatient chronic pain patients, general medical outpatients, and unselected undergraduates. High fear of pain individuals had greater avoidance/escape from a pain-relevant Behavioral Avoidance Test with Video, relative to their low fear counterparts, suggesting predictive validity. Chronic pain patients reported the greatest fear of severe pain. Directions for future research with the FPQ-III are discussed, along with general comments about the relation of fear and anxiety to pain.

Exploratory factor analysis of the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale in patients with chronic pain complaints

Pain, 1997

The Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale (PASS) is a 40-item self-report measure that consists of four subscales measuring aspects of painrelated anxiety and avoidance. Despite its growing popularity, there have been few studies of its psychometric properties. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the factor structure of the PASS in a sample of 259 chronic pain patients. Principal component analysis with oblique (Oblimin) rotation provided partial support for the factorial validity of the PASS. Five factors were extracted: (1) catastrophic thoughts, (2) physiological anxiety symptoms, (3) escape/avoidance behaviours, (4) cognitive interference, and (5) coping strategies. The use of analgesic medication did not influence the factor solution. The factors were characterised by correlating them with pain-related measures, and with measures of mood state. Implications are considered for revising the PASS subscales to provide a more comprehensive and factorially valid assessment of pain-related fear and avoidance.

Pain-related fear: a critical review of the related measures

Pain research and treatment, 2011

In regards to pain-related fear, this study aimed to: (1) identify existing measures and review their measurement properties, and (2) identify the optimum measure for specific constructs of fear-avoidance, pain-related fear, fear of movement, and kinesiophobia. Systematic literature search for instruments designed to measure fear of pain in patients with persistent musculoskeletal pain. Psychometric properties were evaluated by adjusted Wind criteria. Five questionnaires (Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ), Fear-Avoidance of Pain Scale (FAPS), Fear of Pain Questionnaire (FPQ), Pain and Anxiety Symptoms Scale (PASS), and the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia (TSK)) were included in the review. The main findings were that for most questionnaires, there was no underlying conceptual model to support the questionnaire's construct. Psychometric properties were evaluated by diverse methods, which complicated comparisons of different versions of the same questionnaires. Construct v...

Dimensional and componential structure of a hierarchical organization of pain-related anxiety constructs

Psychological Assessment, 2009

Research has identified several anxiety and fear constructs that contribute directly or indirectly to the chronic course of pain. One way to gain insight into the frequently observed interrelations between these constructs may be by conceptualizing them within a hierarchical structure. In this structure, general and specific constructs are proposed at different levels of a hierarchical tree. The present study sought to find evidence for this idea by exploring the dimensional and componential structure of a hierarchical representation of pain-related anxiety constructs. Small cards describing the individual items of 9 pain-related anxiety measures were presented to undergraduate students (N ϭ 294), who were asked to sort them into piles of what they perceived as items of similar meaning. Cluster analysis (additive tree analyses) revealed cluster groups that could be interpreted along the lines of the proposed hierarchical structure. Multidimensional scaling analysis showed that the similarity data are characterized by a dimension that runs from general affective to pain-specific concerns. This study thus offers empirical support for the postulation of a general and specific hierarchical ordering of these constructs. Furthermore, its results endorse the independent use of various pain-related anxiety measures in research and practice aiming to assess negative emotional constructs that contribute to pain.

Do patients with chronic pain selectively attend to pain-related information?: preliminary evidence for the mediating role of fear

PAIN, 1997

Preliminary evidence from a study using a modified Stroop paradigm suggests that individuals with chronic pain selectively attend to pain-related information. The current study was conducted in an attempt to replicate and extend this finding. Nineteen patients with chronic pain stemming from musculoskeletal injury and 22 healthy control subjects participated. All participants completed a computerised task designed to evaluate attentional allocation to cues thematically related to pain and injury via measurement of detection latencies for dotprobes that followed their presentation. Results indicated that patients did not differ from control subjects in their pattern of responses to dot-probes that were presented following either the pain-or injury-related cues. This pattern of results continued to hold true after including level of depression as a covariate in the analysis. However, when patients were divided on the basis of scores on the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (Peterson, R.A. and Reiss, S., Anxiety Sensitivity Index Manual, 2nd edn., International Diagnostic Systems, Worthington, OH, 1992), a measure related to fear of pain (Asmundson, G.J.G. and Norton, G.R., Behav. Res. Ther., 34 (1996) 545-554), those with low anxiety sensitivity shifted attention away from stimuli related to pain whereas those with high anxiety sensitivity responded similarly to dotprobes regardless of the parameters of presentation. These results suggest that the operation of the information processing system in patients with chronic pain may be dependent on a patient's trait predisposition to fear pain. Theoretical and ecological implications are discussed. © 1997 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

Psychometric Evaluation of the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale (PASS) in Chronic Pain Patients

Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 2000

This study examined psychometric properties of the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale (PASS), a measure of pain-related fear. A recently developed shortened version of the PASS, the PASS-20, was also investigated. Previously reported factor structures of the PASS were tested by means of confirmatory factor analysis. Results indicated that all models fitted adequately but that a fivefactor solution fitted slightly better compared to the other models tested. The four-factor solution of the PASS-20 was tested by means of confirmatory factor analysis and results indicated adequate fit. Moreover, the four-factor solution of the PASS-20 was invariant among fibromyalgia and low-back pain patients. Convergent validity of the original PASS and the PASS-20 was good and internal consistency reliability adequate to excellent. The suitability of the original PASS and the PASS-20 are discussed and directions for future research are provided.

The Fear of Pain Questionnaire – Short Form (FPQ-SF): Factorial validity and psychometric properties

Pain, 2008

McNeil and Rainwater's Fear of Pain Questionnaire III (FPQ-III, 1998) is an empirically derived self-report inventory that assesses fear of three broad categories of pain: Severe, Minor, and Medical Pain. Previous exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggest that the original 3-factor model of the FPQ-III has a poor fit [Osman A, Breitenstein JL, Barrios FX, Gutierrez PM, Kopper BA. The Fear of Pain Questionnaire-III: further reliability and validity with nonclinical samples. J Behav Med 2002;25:155-73; Albaret MC, Sastre MTM, Cottensin A, Mullet E. The Fear of Pain Questionnaire: factor structure in samples of young, middleaged and elderly European people. Eur J Pain 2004;8:273-81; Roelofs J, Peters ML, Deutz J, Spijker C, Vlaeyen JWS. The Fear of Pain Questionnaire (FPQ): further psychometric examination in a non-clinical sample. Pain 2005;116:339-46.

Do fundamental fears differentially contribute to pain-related fear and pain catastrophizing? An evaluation of the sensitivity index

European Journal of Pain, 2006

Three fundamental fears -anxiety sensitivity (AS), injury/illness sensitivity (IS) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) -have been proposed to underlie common fears and psychopathological conditions. In pain research, the relation between AS and (chronic) pain processes was the subject of several studies, whereas the possible role of IS has been ignored. The current research examines the role of IS with respect to various pain-related variables in two studies. In the first study, 192 healthy college students completed the Sensitivity Index (SI; a composite measure assessing the three fundamental fears) and various pain-related questionnaires. In a second study, 60 students out of the original sample took part in a pain induction procedure and completed the SI as well. We first examined the properties of the SI. Factor analysis on the SI replicated the proposed factor structure [Taylor S. The structure of fundamental fears, J Behav Ther Exp Psychiat 1993;24:289-99]. However, some items of the ASI did show problematic loadings and were therefore excluded in subsequent analyses. The main hypothesis of the current study states that IS is a stronger predictor than AS of pain catastrophizing and fear of pain as assessed by self-report measures, and of pain tolerance and anticipatory fear of pain as assessed in a pain induction study. This hypothesis could be confirmed for all variables, except for pain tolerance, which was not predicted by any of the three fundamental fears. The current study can be considered as an impetus for devoting attention to IS in future pain research.