PPP - Stage 2 Development

In the second stage of the study we wanted to look again at the 56 behaviours identified in the first stage. We sent out another questionnaire to a different group of parents. We were aiming this time to find out whether the behaviours we had listed could be reliably identified at the time a child actually has pain. We asked both parents (or another relative or friend who knew the child well) to rate their child on the forms when they were 'on a good day', and when they had pain. Although there was not always perfect agreement between parents on each of the behaviours, the total score of all the 56 items was very similar between parents. In most cases the score on the scale was considerably higher when parents thought the children had pain than when they did not have pain. This encouraged us to believe that the behaviours that parents and staff had told us about could help us assess a child's pain. At the end of this stage we were able to group some of the behaviours together and take a few out, so that we had 20 types of behaviour to test in the next stage rather than 56.