A pain vocabulary in Finnish-The Finnish pain questionnaire.

Words related to pain were collected by asking 59 students and 18 patients to create a list by free association. Each subject was then given a dictionary-derived Finnish version of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) with the words arranged in alphabetical order and was asked to place his own words among the dictionary-derive words which appeared most appropriate. Simultaneously, each word was allocated on a visual analogue scale (VAS) in order of increasing intensity. A vocabulary using the MPQ groups was then collated using the words for which at least one-half of the subjects agreed as to classification. The words in each group were presented in alphabetical order. The list was then given to 76 university students whose job was to decide if in fact each word did belong to the class assigned. Following this, the words were arranged on a VAS scale in intensity order. The words mm-mean differences were then compared using a t-test. Those words were chosen for the pain vocabulary which reflected a statistically significant intensity change and were most often to be found in the word-list. The same method is applicable irrespective of language. Words are replaceable by numerical values so that follow-up and renewed investigations become statistically comparable.