Development and validation of the pain response inventory for children

The Pain Response Inventory (PRI) was developed as a multidimensional instrument to assess children's coping responses to recurrent pain. The PRI assesses 3 broad coping factors-Active, Passive, and Accommodative-each with subscales representing specific strategies for coping with pain. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to derive and cross-validate the factor structure of the PRI in 3 different samples of children and adolescents: school children, abdominal pain patients, and former abdominal pain patients. The subscales were found to be internally consistent and reasonably stable. Validity of the subscales was assessed by examining the relations of particular coping strategies to various outcome indicators, including functional disability, somatization symptoms, and depressive symptoms. Results indicated that different types of health outcome were predicted by different patterns of PRI coping strategies, thus supporting the utility of a multidimensional approach to the assessment of coping responses to pain.