Pain behaviors provide meaningful information about adolescents in
chronic pain, enhancing their verbal report of
pain intensity with information about the global
pain experience. Caregivers likely consider these expressions when making judgments about their adolescents' medical or emotional needs. Current validated measures of
pain behavior target acute or
procedural pain and young or non-verbal children, while observation systems may be too cumbersome for clinical practice. The objective of this research was to design and evaluate the Adolescent
Pain Behavior Questionnaire (
APBQ), a parent-report measure of adolescent (11-19 years)
pain expressions. This paper provides preliminary results on reliability and validity of the
APBQ. Parent-adolescent dyads (N=138) seen in a multidisciplinary
pain management clinic completed the
APBQ and questionnaires assessing
pain characteristics, quality of life, functional disability, depressive symptoms, and pain catastrophizing. Principal components analysis of the
APBQ supported a single component structure. The final
APBQ scale contained 23 items with high internal consistency (α=0.93). No relationship was found between parent-reported
pain behaviors and adolescent-reported
pain intensity. However, significant correlations were found between parent-reported
pain behaviors and parent- and adolescent-reported functional disability, pain catastrophizing, depressive symptoms, and poorer quality of life. The assessment of
pain behaviors provides qualitatively different information than solely recording
pain intensity and disability. It has clinical utility for use in behavioral treatments seeking to reduce disability, poor coping, and distress.