Pain Frequency, Intensity, and Burden Scale

A measurement of pain is important in both clinical and research samples. Although several tools have been developed to aid in the measurement of pain, no gold standard brief pain assessment is universally utilized. This measure, developed as part of a study in NIDA's National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN), was created to measure multiple aspects of pain. It consists of 4 items, each rated on a 0-8 Likert scale, with lower scores indicating less pain or burden during the past week. The items are: "How frequently have you experience pain in the past week?", "How would you rate the intensity of your pain in the last week?", "How much did pain interfere with your daily life in the past week?", and "How often did you use medication or other treatment to manage your pain in the last week?"