Abstract
Considering the high prevalence of abdominal pain in children and adolescents in Iran, it is essential to use appropriate screening tools. One of the most comprehensive, yet concise, tools for this purpose is the Abdominal Pain Index (API). This study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the self-report API in adolescents. In this descriptive study, A total of 162 Iranian adolescents in the age range of 12 to 18 years were considered as the sample group, which included two groups of school students (n = 125) and adolescent patients with abdominal pain (n = 37). Clinical sample was selected by the available sampling method, and nonclinical sample was selected by the cluster sampling method. Adolescents in the sample group were selected from both clinical and nonclinical groups in order to evaluate differential validity. Instruments, including API, somatic symptoms subscale of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ), were also completed for the participants. Also, to evaluate the construct validity of API, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis methods were applied. The exploratory factor analysis identified one general factor, and the confirmatory factor analysis results show the model's satisfactory fitting. Also, the researchers' hypothesis, i.e., API is a single-factor model (with five items), was approved. The reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was satisfactory for the total scale (α < 0.7). This study showed that API could be used with considerable confidence for Iranian children and adolescents with chronic pain.
Highlights
Chronic pain refers to persistent and recurrent pain [1], which lasts longer than three months [2]. is disorder has a predominantly adolescent-onset and affects approximately 11–38% of the youth [3]
E purpose of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of the Abdominal Pain Index (API) in the Iranian adolescents. e results showed that the abdominal pain questionnaire for Iranian adolescents with chronic pain has a single-factor structure. e results of the present study showed that API has good reliability, based on the internal consistency coefficient and test-retest results; this finding is consistent with the results of previous studies (e.g., [1])
Consistent with [1], discriminant validity was supported by the significantly higher API scores observed among the clinical group compared with the nonclinical group
Summary
Chronic pain refers to persistent and recurrent pain [1], which lasts longer than three months [2]. is disorder has a predominantly adolescent-onset and affects approximately 11–38% of the youth [3]. Since pain is a personal experience and the gold standard to measuring it is self-report tools [14], several scales have been developed for this purpose Some of these scales to measuring pain in children and adolescents include Adolescent Pediatric Pain Tool (APPT) [18], Faces Pain Scale (FPS) [19], Faces Pain Rating Scale (FPRS) [20], Oucher Scale (OS) [21], and Abdominal Pain Index (API). Erefore, the present study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the self-report API in adolescents due to a lack of similar research in Iran For this purpose, the construct validity was evaluated by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and differential and convergent validity methods. Given the single-factor structure of the API [22], it was hypothesized that the Persian version of the API in Iranian adolescents would have only one factor
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