The Arabic Version of the Faces Pain Scale-Revised: Cultural Adaptation, Validity, and Reliability Properties When Used with Children and Adolescents.

Jessica Finianos,Elisabet Sánchez-Rodríguez,Jordi Miró

doi:10.3390/children8121184

Jessica Finianos, Elisabet Sánchez-Rodríguez + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/children8121184

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Abstract

The Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R) is widely used to assess pain intensity in young people. The aims of this research were to study the convergent and discriminant validity and reliability properties of a culturally adapted version of the FPS-R for its use with Arabic-speaking individuals. The sample consisted of 292 students living in Lebanon. They were interviewed online, asked to imagine themselves in one of two given situations based on their age (8–12 and 13–18 years old), and then asked rate the intensity of pain they would experience using the FPS-R-Arabic and a Numerical Rating Scale (NRS-11-Arabic). They were also asked to respond to the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS-C-Arabic). Two weeks later, participants were asked to repeat the same procedure. The data showed strong associations between the scores of the FPS-R-Arabic and NRS-11-Arabic (r = 0.72; p < 0.001), which were higher than the associations of the scores of the FPS-Arabic with the PCS-C-Arabic scores (z = 7.36, p < 0.001). The associations between the FPS-R-Arabic scores on the two measurements were also strong (r = 0.76; p < 0.001). The findings support the convergent and discriminant validity and reliability of the FPS-R-Arabic scores when used to measure pain intensity in young people aged 8 to 18 years old.

Highlights

Pain is a common experience in children and adolescents [1,2,3,4]; but, even so, assessing pain in children is still a challenge [5,6,7]
The Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPSR) has six facial expressions and has two main advantages over other faces self-report pain intensity measures: namely, pain intensity scores can be matched with the common 0–10 metric used by most scales, like the numerical rating scale [17], and the faces are depicted without smiles or tears, avoiding the confusion between pain intensity and distress [19,21,22,23]
A sample of 292 children and adolescents participated in this study

Summary

Introduction

Pain is a common experience in children and adolescents [1,2,3,4]; but, even so, assessing pain in children is still a challenge [5,6,7]. Research has shown that self-reporting is the best and primary source of information for assessing pain intensity in children [8,9,10]. Various self-report questionnaires exist for measuring and assessing pain intensity, all with positive and negative characteristics [9,11,12,13,14]. Faces are commonly used in self-report pain intensity questionnaires, especially with younger children because they are appealing, simple, and easy to use [15]. Of the different faces scales, the revised version of the Faces Pain Scale [16,17] is one of the most used for measuring and assessing pain intensity [18,19,20]. The Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPSR) has six facial expressions and has two main advantages over other faces self-report pain intensity measures: namely, pain intensity scores can be matched with the common 0–10 metric used by most scales, like the numerical rating scale [17], and the faces are depicted without smiles or tears, avoiding the confusion between pain intensity and distress [19,21,22,23]

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