Construção de uma escala dedor utilizando estimativas de magnitude / Scaling of pain using themagnitude estimation method

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

1999

RESUMO

Concepts and subjective phenomena such as pain have always been difficult to measure accurately. The psychophysical methodology, mainly the magnitude estimation method developed by S.S. Stevens (1950), provides techniques for the development of precise scaling instruments for subjective phenomena. The present study intends to build a tool for the measure of pain using the psychophysical method of subjective magnitude estimation. Forty subjects (30 women and 10 men) with ages between 20 and 79 years were selected for the experimental group and twenty-four subjects with similar characteristics (sex, age, education and marital status) for the control group. Subjects from the experimental group were under treatment in the Pain Clinic of the University of São Paulo (Clínica Neurológica do Instituto Central do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo). The differences between the judgements made by the experimental group (with pain) and the judgements made by the control group (without pain) were studied in order to investigate if those groups had different ways of estimating the pain aroused by different painful situations. Data was collected individually by means of written forms. Three different forms were used for each subject containing three different sets of painful situations grouped as follows: pain due to common situations (headache, back pain, a.s.o.); pain due to severe illness (back pain, cancer, a.s.o); pain aroused by emotional or psychosocial situations (death of the son/daughter, diagnostic of severe illness, lost of the job, a.s.o.). From these judgement, the physical magnitude of the pain was calculated using the reverse of the psychophysical function of S. S. Stevens (S=kIn). The results demonstrated that there is agreement between the magnitude judgements of pain by both groups, making it possible to construct a pain-measuring tool by this means. Highest correlation was obtained for pain due to common situations (r=0,896), probably because most of the subjects had experienced these situations before and could give an accurate estimation of the aroused pain. It is concluded, that a pain-measuring tool should use these kind of painful situations as references for the pain felt by the patients.

ASSUNTO(S)

psicofísica cognição pain psychophysics scaling sofrimento dor cognition suffering escalas

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