Validation of the Hanyang Pain Scale for clerical workers with musculoskeletal pain

The visual analog scale (VAS) is the most widely used scale for pain assessment. However, its reflection of time-, sleep-, work-, psychological-, and reward-related pain characteristics is limited. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a new pain scale, the Hanyang Pain Scale (HPS), evaluate its reliability, and assess its agreement with currently used scales.

The HPS comprises a 10 cm long visual vertical bar, similar to the VAS, with eleven simple evaluation sentences related to pain frequency, work, and sleep. We selected 1,037 clerical workers as study subjects and conducted medical examinations through interviews, physical examinations, and musculoskeletal pain assessments tools including the VAS, HPS, and McGill pain questionnaire (MPQ). The reliability of the HPS and its agreement with VAS and MPQ were statistically analyzed.

HPS test-retest reliability was very high (Pearson correlation coefficient =0.902). In particular, HPS test-retest reliability in the weak pain group (<4 points for both VAS and HPS) was greater (Pearson correlation coefficient =0.863) than that of VAS (0.721). Therefore, the HPS showed consistent pain assessment results in cases of relatively weak pain. Correlation was high between HPS and VAS scores (Spearman's ρ =0.526) and satisfactory between HPS and MPQ scores (Spearman's ρ =0.367).

The newly developed HPS has high reliability and strong agreement with other currently widely used scales. In particular, HPS was more consistent than the VAS for relatively weak pain. Based on these findings, the HPS can be considered a useful pain assessment tool for clerical workers. Further clinical research on musculoskeletal diseases and on workers in other fields is required.