Pain: Measurement of Pain Critique

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  • Created by: Psych951
  • Created on: 07-01-19 15:50

Pain: Measurement of Pain Critique

Advantages

  • Physiological measures: Objective; Cause and effect, controlled; Precise
  • Observational measures: Balance between objectivity and capturing experience; Observable so easily measured; Can be used when patients are unable to provide reliable reports
  • Self-report: Captures pain as an experience; Can develop validated scales; Easily accessible and understood
  • Evidence that the social context should be considered because we often use cues to make judgements about pain (Hadjistavropoulos et al 1996)

Disadvantages

  • Physiological measures: No validate objective markers (Cowen et al 2015); Unreliably validated by self-report; Inconsistent with other measures
  • Observational measures: Often rely on interpretation; Can't be sure of cause and effect
  • Self-report: Subjective measure therefore issues of desirability bias; Assumes participants understand their own experience and the scales

Evaluation

All methods have strengths and weakness, and it may be helpful to use them to validate each other. The method should be appropriate to the research question and target population 

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