Elsevier

The Journal of Pain

Volume 10, Issue 3, March 2009, Pages 274-281
The Journal of Pain

Original Report
Can End-of-Day Reports Replace Momentary Assessment of Pain and Fatigue?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2008.09.003Get rights and content
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Abstract

This study evaluated the ability of end-of-day (EOD) ratings to accurately reflect momentary (EMA) ratings on 10 widely used pain and fatigue items. Rheumatology patients (n = 105) completed ≥5 randomly scheduled EMA assessments of each item per day as well as EOD ratings. Correlations were high between EOD and EMA ratings of the 5 pain items (r = .90 to .92) and somewhat lower for the 5 fatigue/energy items (r = .71 to .86). To examine the ability of EOD ratings to represent 1 week of EMA ratings, 7 EOD ratings were averaged and correlated with EMA (r ≥ .95 for pain items, r = .88 to .95 for fatigue/energy items). Further, averaging only 3 to 5 EOD ratings achieved very high correlations with 1 week of EMA ratings. Within-subject correlations of EOD with mean daily EMA across 7 days confirmed patients' ability to provide daily ratings that accurately reflect their day-to-day variation in symptom levels. These EOD results were compared to traditional recall ratings collected in the same protocol. It was concluded (1) that EOD ratings were a better representation of EMA than were recall ratings, and (2) that EOD ratings across a reporting period can replace EMA for studies targeting average levels of pain or fatigue.

Perspective

This study in chronic pain patients demonstrated that end-of-day ratings of pain are highly accurate representations of average levels of pain experience across a day; ratings of fatigue were somewhat less accurate, though still at a level that would be valid.

Key words

Pain
fatigue
momentary assessment
electronic diaries
patient reported outcomes

Cited by (0)

Supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (1 U01-AR052170-01; Arthur A. Stone, principal investigator) and by GCRC Grant M01-RR10710 from the National Center for Research Resources.

Software and data management services for the electronic diary assessments were provided by Invivodata, Inc (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). J.E.B. and A.A.S. have a financial interest in Invivodata, Inc. and AAS is a senior scientist for the Gallup Organization.