Research Article The Pain Frequency-Severity-Duration Scale as a Measure of Pain: Preliminary Validation in a Pediatric Chronic Pain Sample Katherine S. Salamon, 1 W. Hobart Davies, 2 Melissa R. Fuentes, 3 Steven J. Weisman, 4 and Keri R. Hainsworth 4 1 Division of Pain Medicine, Children’s National Medical Center, 111 Michigan Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20010, USA 2 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 224 Garland Hall, 2441 Hartford Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA 3 Rogers Memorial Hospital, 11101 Lincoln Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53227, USA 4 Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and Medical College of Wisconsin, 9000 W. Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53226, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Katherine S. Salamon; ksalamon@cnmc.org Received 25 June 2013; Revised 9 October 2013; Accepted 18 October 2013; Published 20 January 2014 Academic Editor: Bjorn Meyerson Copyright © 2014 Katherine S. Salamon et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Typically, pain is measured by intensity and sensory characteristics. Although intensity is one of the most common dimensions of pain assessment, it has been suggested that measuring pain intensity in isolation is only capturing part of the pain experience and may not lead to an accurate measurement of how pain impacts a child’s daily functioning. he current study aimed to develop a measure that would capture pain intensity along with frequency and duration in a clinical sample of youth diagnosed with chronic pain. he pain-frequency-severity-duration (PFSD) scale was developed and data were collected from a multidisciplinary pain clinic at a large, midwestern children’s hospital. Validated measures of functional limitations and health related quality of life were also collected. Signiicant correlations were found between the PFSD composite score, functional limitations, and health related quality of life. Future research should continue to evaluate this questionnaire utilizing other validated pain measures and other areas potentially impacted by chronic pain and with more diverse samples. his initial inding suggests that the PFSD is a convenient self-reported measure and is strongly related to health related quality of life and functional disability. 1. Introduction Idiopathic chronic pain is persistent pain, lasting longer than three months, that does not serve as a somatic warning sign of tissue damage or injury [1]. It is estimated that one in ive children in the United States is afected by chronic pain [1]. Typically, pain is measured by its intensity and sensory char- acteristics (e.g., location and pattern, including frequency and duration) [2]. Speciically, pain frequency, severity/inten- sity, and duration are oten assessed simultaneously at med- ical appointments and during hospital visits. Self-reported pain intensity continues to be the most widely used mea- surement of a child’s pain [3]. Although intensity is the most common dimension of pain assessment, von Baeyer has suggested that measuring pain intensity alone is only cap- turing part of the clinical picture [4, 5]. Given that pain is typically thought of as a subjective experience, having an accurate measurement of pain intensity does not guarantee an accurate measurement of how that pain impacts a child’s daily functioning. For example, two youths may report similar intensity of pain on a 10 point scale; however, one youth may limit social and physical involvement while the other continues to engage in daily activities with minimal impairment. herefore, it is important to have a pain measure that better relects the whole pain experience. Youth with chronic pain can have decreased social func- tioning, increased school absenteeism, and decreased quality of life [6, 7]. Standard assessment of pain intensity and duration has notoriously been unhelpful in the past as it is not predictive of functioning. Research in pediatric chronic pain has found inconsistencies within the relationship between pain intensity/duration and functional outcomes, such as disability and quality of life [8], indicating that assessing for intensity and duration of pain may not provide an accurate Hindawi Publishing Corporation Pain Research and Treatment Volume 2014, Article ID 653592, 6 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/653592