Chakrabartty Satyendra Nath*

Indian Statistical Institute, Indian Maritime University, Indian Ports Association, India

*Corresponding Author: Chakrabartty Satyendra Nath, Indian Statistical Institute, Indian Maritime University, Indian Ports Association, India

Received: November 01, 2023; Published: January 16, 2024

Abstract

Background: Assessment of pain intensity, factors of pain after surgery and their effects on Quality of Life (QoL) by tools using Likert items or Numerical rating scales, etc. are not comparable and may give different results. No instrument performed uniformly as "best" or "worst”.

Method: A method of transforming raw scores to normally distributed scores (P-scores) is described. Based on proposed P-scores, the paper proposes, an overall pain status (OPS) by arithmetic aggregation of component variables. Similarly, P-scores of items of QoL are combined to get overall QoL scores (〖QoL〗_Total). Empirical relationship can be established between OPS and 〖QoL〗_Total to predict the later with knowledge of the former. In addition, ratios of P-scores of each factor, measure of pain intensity and QoL at the current period and the base period may be combined by multiplicative aggregation to find composites index of overall pain status (OPSI) by OPSI= (P_1c.P_2c……….P_nc)/(P_10.P_20..… P_n0 ) *100

Results: Scores of OPS and QoLTotal are monotonic following normal distributions meaningful comparisons and classification of patients and assessing progress/deterioration of a patient or a group of patients and drawing path of improvement/decline. Cut-off scores of different scales can be integrated by considering equivalent scores (x_(0,) y_0) of two scales. In addition, P-scores help to find reliability as per theoretical definition and factorial validity to reflect validity of the main factor for which the scale was developed. For the index OPSI, aggregation of dimensions = OPSI as aggregation of components variables giving minimum trade-off among the dimensions or components. Dimensions or components where P_ic/P_i0 <0 are critical requiring attention of the physicians and care givers.

Conclusions: Proposed method of transforming ordinal scores of K-point items to continuous, monotonic scores following normal distribution helps to avoid major limitations of existing summative scores and facilitate undertaking analysis under parametric set up. From the angle of distribution, OPS may be preferred than OPSI. Future studies with multi-data sets involving more than one QoL scales are suggested to investigate characteristics of OPS and index of overall pain status (OPSI) along with clinically relevant issues and psychometric properties of the proposed transformations.

Keywords: Pain Intensity; Quality of Life; Normal Distribution; Responsiveness; Equivalent Scores; Reliability; Validity

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Citation

Citation: Chakrabartty Satyendra Nath. “Better aggregation of Pain scores and Quality of Life". Acta Scientific Neurology 7.2 (2024): 19-28.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2024 Chakrabartty Satyendra Nath. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.