The perceived structure of 176 pain descriptive words.

The semantic structure and the underlying dimensions of 176 common Dutch words used to describe various kinds of pain were studied. Seventy-seven subjects rated the intensity of the pain described by each of these words; another 53 subjects sorted the words with regard to their similarity in meaning. A unidimensional solution adequately represented the intensity ratings. The sorting data were analyzed by means of HOMALS, a program for multiple correspondence analysis, which yielded a 3-dimensional configuration differentiating evaluative/affective, sensory, temporal and spatial aspects of pain. Regression analysis showed intensity to be the main criterion for similarity within the affective/evaluative group, whereas intensity was not related to the similarities among the sensory words. Cluster analysis, using the distances in the 3-dimensional HOMALS space, yielded 32 clusters of words among which the subscales of both the original McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) and the Dutch version by Vanderiet et al. could easily be identified. Since the present results were obtained in a different country and by completely different methods of data collection (i.e., similarity sortings without a priori categories), they strongly indicate the cross-cultural and cross-methodological generality of the structure of pain descriptions.