Applications of Item-Response Theory in Health Outcomes Assessment and Pain Measurement

Abstract

A key finding of the Institute of Medicine's 2011 report Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education, and Research is the need for improved pain assessment. The following chapters that comprise this dissertation aim, in small part, to address this need. Both chapters focus of pain measurement, and as such are located at the intersection of psychology, public health, and statistical methodology. The first is an assessment of the validity and reliability of previously development measures of Pain Interference and Pain Behavior using fixed and random effects linear modeling. The second reports the development of a novel measure of neuropathic pain quality using factor analytic and item-response theory-based statistical approaches to measurement. Concluding remarks highlight contributions of these study findings to pain-related research.