Patterns of pain descriptor usage in African Americans and European Americans with chronic pain

This study examined ethnic differences in the use of pain descriptors, comparing standardized pain assessment data from African American and European American patients with heterogeneous chronic pain syndromes. The measure was the Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) including the embedded Visual Analog Scale (VAS). Exploratory factor analyses of SF-MPQ data identified differences in factor structure with the VAS loading on a different factor for each group. A 5-factor solution was obtained from the African American group and a 4-factor solution was obtained from the European American group. There was little overlap in the pattern matrices for African American and European American groups. Results suggest that the VAS is as sensitive to ethnic differences as other traditional pain measures.