Exploration of the validity of CPAQ clustering in persistent pain
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Further exploration of the validity of Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire clustering in a persistent pain population
IRAS ID
289748
Contact name
David Gillanders
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Edinburgh
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 20 days
Research summary
Pain management works really well for some people, but not everyone. We don’t know why that is, but we know that people with pain are a very diverse population and may have different needs. Pain management is most often delivered in groups. We know that groups that are cohesive tend to have better results, but the available evidence shows that grouping people by age, pain site, or pain condition does not improve outcomes. We wonder whether grouping people by psychological processes may be more clinically useful, for example by how people relate to their pain. Anecdotally this has worked well in NHS GGC, who offer two different groups based on pain coping styles. Recent research shows that we can use patient scores from the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire to identify four distinct groups of people with persistent pain. Our research will be an online questionnaire study which aims to validate this and further build on this by exploring whether these four groups also differ in other clinically meaningful ways. We will create an online survey with questionnaires that ask about pain acceptance, but also other clinically meaningful concepts such as valued living, pain self efficacy, emotion recognition and regulation, self compassion, anxiety and depression. We will advertise this survey to people with persistent pain through online forums, social media, pain charities, and through NHS pain management services. Those who choose to take part, will answer the online survey. We will then be able to determine whether these four distinct groups exist in a UK sample and also whether there are differences in treatment needs between groups; this can help us tailor future pain management programmes to be as relevant and effective as possible.
REC name
London - Riverside Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/PR/0448
Date of REC Opinion
12 Apr 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion