• Dieuwke S Veldhuijzen, Siri D S Noordermeer, Albert J M van Wijck, Tom J Snijders, and Rinie Geenen.
• Pain Clinic, Division of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, Rudolf Magus Institute of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
• Pain Pract. 2013 Jul 1;13(6):459-66.

BackgroundPatients with pain are more reactive to various types of sensations, not limited to pain alone. A potential useful instrument to assess reactivity is the Kohn Reactivity Scale (KRS). This study examines the psychometric characteristics of the KRS-Dutch version and its ability to differentiate between subjects with and without pain.MethodsInternal consistency, convergent validity, and test-retest reliability of the Dutch translation of the KRS were assessed in 321 pain-free control subjects and different subgroups of this sample. Subsequently, reactivity scores were compared between the pain-free subjects and 291 pain patients who were referred to a pain clinic for treatment.ResultsReliability analyses indicated good internal consistency (α ≥ 0.77) and high test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation = 0.95) of the KRS in the control subjects. Validity analyses yielded positive correlations of the KRS with related constructs like pain vigilance and awareness (r = 0.37), symptom severity (r = 0.29), and the personality characteristic neuroticism (r = 0.20). Pain patients had overall significantly higher KRS scores than the pain-free subjects indicating increased reactivity, particularly for the patients with medically unexplained pain.ConclusionsThese findings indicate that the KRS is a useful instrument to screen for reactivity in pain patients, which may be of particular relevance for those suffering from medically unexplained pain.© 2012 The Authors Pain Practice © 2012 World Institute of Pain.

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