Pain belief assessment: A comparison of the short and long versions of the survey of pain attitudes

Reliable and valid measures of pain-related beliefs are necessary to test and refine cognitive-behavioral models of chronic pain and may be used by clinicians to identify and monitor changes in beliefs during treatment. The Survey of Pain Attitudes (SOPA) has shown good psychometric properties (reliability and validity) and has been used in a number of studies. The current study sought to determine the reliability and validity of 2 brief versions of the SOFA. The original SOFA (SOPA-57) was completed by 126 patients with chronic pain before multidisciplinary pain treatment, after treatment, and at 2-week and 1-month follow-ups. Measures of pain coping, disability, physician visits for pain. and depression also were administered before treatment. A 35-item SOFA (SOPA-35) was created using criteria similar to those used to develop the original SOFA, and the content and psychometric properties of this brief version were compared with those of the original SOFA and a previously developed 30-item version (SOPA-30). Although the reliabilities of most of the scales were adequate to excellent, low reliabilities were found for the SOPA-30 Disability and Medication scales and the SOPA-35 Harm scale. With the exception of the Medical Cure scale, the correlations between the SOFA scales and the criterion measures supported the validity of each version of the SOFA. The SOPA-35 was more similar to the SOPA-57 than was the SOPA-30. Implications for use of the measures are discussed.