Abstract
Background: Some feelings elicited by acupuncture-type interventions are “nonspecific”, interpretable as resulting from the placebo effect, our own self-healing capacities—or, indeed, the flow of qi. Expectation is thought to contribute to these nonspecific effects. Here we describe the use of two innovative 20-item questionnaires (EXPre20 and EXPost20) in a teaching situation. Methods: Respondents were acupuncture students or practitioners on electroacupuncture (EA) training courses (N = 68). EXPre20 and EXPost20 questionnaires were completed before and after receiving individualised treatment administered by colleagues. Respondents were also asked about their prior experience of EA or transcutaneous electroacupuncture stimulation (TEAS). Results: Respondents expected significantly more items to change than not to change, but significantly fewer were experienced as changing. Increases in given questionnaire items were both expected and experienced significantly more often than decreases. “Tingling”, “Relaxation”, and “Relief” or “Warmth” were most often expected to increase or were experienced as such, and “Pain” and “Tension” to decrease or experienced as decreasing. Expectations of change or no change were confirmed more often than not, particularly for “Tingling” and “Tension”. This was not the result of the personal respondent style. Cluster analysis suggested the existence of two primary feeling clusters, “Relaxation” and “Alertness”. Conclusions: Feelings experienced during or immediately after acupuncture-type interventions may depend both on prior experience and expectation.
Highlights
Writings about acupuncture often mention its “nonspecific” effects, even those familiar with the literature on these effects vary in their interpretation of the term [1]
No independently developed pre-existing questionnaires were found that could be used to assess expectation or experience of the nonspecific feelings that may arise in response to acupuncture-type interventions, scales have been developed to evaluate the common specific sensations elicited by acupuncture [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]
The two groups were composed of respondents from five training centres (CPD: Brighton, Nottingham; Students: the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine, Reading (CICM), London South bank University (LSBU), and the Northern College of Acupuncture, York (NCA))
Summary
Writings about acupuncture often mention its “nonspecific” effects, even those familiar with the literature on these effects vary in their interpretation of the term [1]. There are accounts of how, in response to placebo (more accurately, sham) acupuncture, bodily sensations of warmth, tingling, pulsing, flow (spreading, radiating), and electricity have been elicited—warmth and tingling being associated with treatment efficacy [5,6]. Some feelings elicited by acupuncture-type interventions are “nonspecific”, interpretable as resulting from the placebo effect, our own self-healing capacities—or, the flow of qi. We describe the use of two innovative 20-item questionnaires (EXPre and EXPost20 ) in a teaching situation
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