PSYCHOPHYSICAL VALIDITY OF THE REASON SCALE OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF PAIN

Abstract

The objectives of this study was to scale the different types of existing pain, comparatively, employing Magnitude Estimations and the Expanded Category Estimations, to verify whether the order of the intensity degrees of the resulting pain of the two psychophysical methods are similar; to confirm whether the variability of the expanded category estimations increases linearly in function of the increase in the category estimations, such as it occurs with the magnitude estimations. Participants: 30 outpatients, 30 physicians and 30 nurses. The psychophysical scale of the different types of pain in these groups was validated with the exponent of 1,65 for patients, 1,17 for the physicians and 1,14 for the nurses. Kendall Ìs (W) coefficient applied to the estimates for each method for the different pain resulted in W=0,74 ( patients), W=0,81 (physicians) and W=0,74 (nurses), which indicates that the rank order derived from the estimates is highly concordant for the three groups.