Quantifying delayed-onset muscle soreness: a comparison of unidimensional and multidimensional instrumentation

Unidimensional pain instrumentation, whereby participants simply rate the intensity of their pain on one evaluative level, has been the most common method of assessing delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS). However, pain has been shown to be a multidimensional phenomenon including sensory, affective, and evaluative aspects. The aims of this study were two-fold: (1) to compare the DOMS pain responses derived from a multidimensional instrument (i.e. the McGill Pain Questionnaire--MPQ) with those using a unidimensional measure (i.e. a visual analogue scale), and (2) to identify the MPQ descriptors most commonly used to characterize DOMS among a sample of 14 male (mean age = 24.7 years, s = 4.4) and 9 female participants (mean age = 24.6 years, s = 3.5). Although the results demonstrated no significant differences between the pain ratings of the two instruments (mean values of the pain rating indices had a Spearman rank correlation coefficient of r = 1.00), suggesting no significant advantage to be gained in using the MPQ, a clearer description of DOMS emerged. The most frequently selected DOMS descriptors were "tight" (95% of participants chose this descriptor at least once), "sore" (86%), "tender" (86%), "annoying" (86%), and "pulling" (68%). These findings may be of use to researchers and sports medicine professionals in their deliberations about which instrumentation to use in quantifying DOMS and in distinguishing such pain from other, potentially more serious, musculoskeletal damage.