A comparison of two pain measures for Asian American cancer patients

Although two of the most commonly used multidimensional pain scales are the McGill Pain Questionnaire-Short Form (MPQ-SF) and the Brief Pain Inventory-Short Form (BPI-SF), little psychometric analysis of these tools has been done among ethnic minority populations. This study evaluates and compares psychometric properties of these scales among 119 Asian American cancer patients. Cronbach's alphas of the MPQ-SF and BPI-SF are high (alpha = .85 to .97). Correlation coefficients of the item analyses are .12 to .88 for the MPQ-SF and .44 to .90 for the BPI-SF. Two factors are extracted for both instruments. Correlations between pain scores and the usage of pain medications are low for the MPQ-SF ( r = .23 to .33) and moderate for the BPI-SF (r = .40 to .42). Results indicate that among Asian Americans, both pain scales are internally consistent, some items in each are redundant, and the BPI-SF is more valid than the MPQ-SF.