Optimizing pain intensity assessment in clinical trials: How many ratings are needed to best balance the need for validity and to minimize assessment burden?

Pain intensity is the most commonly used outcome domain in pain clinical trials. To minimize the chances of Type II error (i.e., concluding that a treatment does not have beneficial effects, when in fact it does), the measure of pain intensity used should be sensitive to changes produced by effective pain treatments. Here we sought to identify the combination of pain intensity ratings that would balance the need for reliability and validity against the need to minimize assessment burden. We conducted secondary analyses using data from a completed 4-arm clinical trial of psychological pain treatments (N = 164 adults).
Source: The Journal of Pain - Category: Materials Science Authors: Tags: Review Article Source Type: research