• Mark P Jensen, Elena Castarlenas, Rubén Roy, Catarina Tomé Pires, Mélanie Racine, Anupa Pathak, and Jordi Miró.
• Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
• Pain Med. 2019 Dec 1; 20 (12): 2411-2420.

ObjectivePain intensity is the most commonly assessed domain in pain research and clinical settings. To facilitate cross-cultural research, knowledge regarding the psychometric properties of pain intensity measures in individuals from different countries is needed. However, the majority of this research has been conducted in English-speaking countries.DesignSurvey study.SettingUniversity.SubjectsFour hundred nineteen college students.MethodsParticipants were asked to complete four measures assessing average pain intensity: 1) the 0-10 numerical rating scale (NRS-11), 2) the 100-mm visual analog scale (VAS), 3) the four-point verbal rating scale (VRS-4), and 4) the Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R).ResultsThe rates of incorrect completion of the four scales were uniformly low (range = 1-2%). The NRS-11 had the highest preference rate (31%), although a substantial number of participants also preferred each of the other three scales (range = 22-24%). The findings support the utility and construct validity of all four pain intensity scales in this Spanish-speaking sample.ConclusionsWhen considered in light of research from other non-English-speaking samples indicating significant psychometric weaknesses for the NRS-11 and VAS and relative strengths of the FPS-R in some groups, the findings suggest that the FPS-R might be the most appropriate pain intensity scale to use when comparisons across populations from different countries is a goal. More research is needed to determine the extent to which demographic (i.e., age, education levels, socioeconomic status) vs cultural factors (i.e., country of origin) influence the reliability, validity, and utility of different pain measures.© 2019 American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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