Chronic pain, impairment, and disability

Overview 115 The measurement of chronic pain, impairment, and disability 117 Conclusions 120 Acknowledgments 120 References 121 Chronic pain, impairment, and disability, rather than being actual entities, are constructs that can only be inferred in order to account for some form of behavior or phenomenon of interest. There is often a discordance or low degree of correlation among levels of chronic pain, impairment, and disability. What makes the operational definition and use of these three constructs difficult is that there are three broad categories of measures that can be used to operationally define them - physical, psychosocial, and overt behavior/function - that are, in turn, not always correlated highly with one another. The scientific literature is replete with many different measurement techniques and tests of these three constructs.