Reliability and Validity of the International Spinal Cord Injury Basic Pain Dataset Items as Self-Report Measures

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the psychometric properties of a subset of International Spinal Cord Injury Basic Pain Data Set (ISCIBPDS) items that could be used as self-report measures in surveys, longitudinal studies and clinical trials. SETTING: Community. METHODS: A subset of the ISCIBPDS items and measures of two validity criteria were administered in a postal survey to 184 individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) and pain. The responses of the participants were evaluated to determine: (1) item response rates (as an estimate of ease of item completion); (2) internal consistency (as an estimate of the reliability of the multiple-item measures); and (3) concurrent validity. RESULTS: The results support the utility and validity of the ISCIBPDS items and scales that measure pain interference, intensity, site(s), frequency, duration, and timing (time of day of worst pain) in individuals with SCI and chronic pain. The results also provide psychometric information that can be used to select from among the ISCIBPDS items in settings that require even fewer items than are in the basic dataset.