Comparative Ability of the Pain Disability Questionnaire in Predicting Health Outcomes

As chronic pain contributes to tremendous personal and societal costs, efforts at identifying and understanding pain-related disability via the biopsychosocial model have become increasingly important in addressing pain-related health outcomes. This study attempted to compare the predictive ability of the Pain Disability Questionnaire against other established measures in terms of health and pain-related outcomes. The sample consisted of 254 adult chronic pain patients seeking treatment through an interdisciplinary chronic pain management clinic. Participants were administered a battery of assessments including the Pain Disability Questionnaire and other established measures of health and pain-related outcomes (e.g., NIH PROMIS measures) at baseline and post-treatment time points. Results demonstrated convergent validity between the Pain Disability Questionnaire and the other study measures. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed significant associations between pain-related disability as measured by the Pain Disability Questionnaire and a range of biopsychosocial outcomes. Pain Disability Questionnaire scores, as placed in categorical severity levels, demonstrated good discriminative abilities in terms of predicting health-related factors. These findings support the clinical use of the Pain Disability Questionnaire as an empirically supported predictor of health-related outcomes as compared with other established measures of pain and health outcomes.