Pain interventions with children: a meta-analysis of research

A meta-analysis of 27 studies on pain management interventions with children was conducted using two decades of research reported in five disciplines. One-fifth of these studies were in the nursing literature and 78% were published since 1979. Two complementary methods of calculating the effectiveness of pain management interventions were used for each of three outcome categories. Fisher's Combined test procedure was used to combine the results of the independent studies, to determine if a significant relationship existed between pain management programs and children's response. An overall effect size (r) was also calculated. Significant relationships of small magnitude were found between pain management interventions and child's response for behavioral (r = .41, chi 2 = 181.97, p less than .0001), self-report (r = .34, chi 2 = 122.06, p less than .0001), and physiologic (r = .30, chi 2 = 88.29, p less than .0001) measures.