Development and validation of the Pain Outcomes Questionnaire-VA

The development of effective pain treatment strategies requires the availability of precise and practical measures of treatment outcomes, the importance of which has been noted in the Veterans Health Administration's (VHA's) National Pain Initiative. This paper presents the results of a 5-year collaborative effort to develop and validate a comprehensive and efficient self-report measure of pain treatment outcomes. Two samples of veterans (957 total subjects) undergoing inpatient or outpatient pain treatment at six VHA facilities completed Pain Outcomes Questionnaire-VA (POQ-VA) items and several additional measures. We used a comprehensive, multistage analytic procedure to evaluate the psychometric properties of the instrument. Results provided strong support for the reliability, validity, and clinical use of the POQ-VA when used to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment for veterans experiencing chronic noncancer pain.