Social Consequences of Pediatric Chronic Pain: Concordance of Multiple Informants

1. Social Consequences of Pediatric Chronic Pain: Concordance of Multiple Informants Katherine Simon, MS1, Amy Sato, MS1, Ayala Y. Gorodzinsky, BS1, Keri Hainsworth, PhD2, W. Hobart Davies, PhD1,2,3, Renee J. Ladwig, RN3, Kimberly Anderson Khan, PhD2,3, and Steven J. Weisman, MD2,3 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee1, Medical College of Wisconsin2, & Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin3 Measures Table III: Youth – Mother Concordance Introduction Children and adolescents may receive social attention from others as a consequence of pain or illness (Walker, Claar, & Garber, 2002). The majority of research has focused upon the relationships between child and mother perspectives. Researchers have yet to examine fathers’ perspectives of social consequences experienced by their children with chronic pain, and the concordance between father and mother report. To date, research has shown that children and mothers tend to be relatively concordant in their perspectives of social consequences (Walker, Claar, & Garber, 2002). However, much less is known about concordance between youth and father perspectives, as well as between caregivers. • Demographic Information, including age, gender, ethnicity, was collected upon arrival at the comprehensive pain center. The primary caregiver completes this information along with the child and the primary care physician associated with the center. • Social Consequences of Pain Questionnaire (SCP; Walker et al., 2002) is a 32-item questionnaire, with scores ranging from 32 to 128, designed to assess the social consequences of pain behavior. The SCP measures types of consequences on three scales: Positive Attention, Activity Restrictions, and Negative Attention. The Privileges scale was combined with the Positive Attention scale score for the purposes of the current study, as suggested by Sato et al (2007). All family members (child, mother, father) completed the SCP. Hypotheses Results • The goal of this preliminary investigation was to explore the concordance between youth-, mother-, and father-report of social consequences of pain as a starting point to understand the role of the father within the care of a child with chronic pain. • Hypothesis I: Youth and their fathers will be concordant on all three subscales of the SCP (Positive Attention, Activity Restrictions, and Negative Attention). • Hypothesis II: Mothers and fathers will be concordant on all three subscales of the SCP (Positive Attention, Activity Restrictions, and Negative Attention). • For Hypothesis I and II, correlational analyses were conducted to determine the level concordance among respondents. • See Table I for the descriptive statistics and Table II - IV for correlations. *p < . 10. **p < .05. ***p < .01. Table IV: Youth – Father Concordance Table I: Descriptive Statistics Methods • This study is based on patients presenting to a multidisciplinary pain clinic at a large Midwestern children’s hospital. • At intake, mothers, fathers, and youth complete a packet of questionnaires that assess clinical, behavioral, and psychosocial variables related to pain. • The current study includes youth 7 - 18 years old with chronic pain (e.g., headache, gastrointestinal pain, musculoskeletal pain). Table II: Mother – Father Concordance *p < . 10. **p < .05. ***p < .01. Conclusions Participant Demographics • The findings highlight moderate levels of agreement between fathers and youth, mothers and youth, and fathers and mothers assessments of the social consequences associated with chronic pain. • While this multi-informant study suggests broad agreement on the social consequences of pain, future research using a multi-method approach (e.g., self-report, behavioral observation) is needed to further examine the validity of the questionnaire method, as well as the implications of these findings. *p < . 10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.