[The Dutch version of the McGill pain questionnaire: a reliable pain questionnaire].

OBJECTIVE: To assess whether the McGill pain questionnaire, translated into Dutch (MPQ-DLV), is a reliable instrument to measure pain.
DESIGN: Questionnaire study.
SETTING: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
METHOD: The MPQ-DLV was administered three times to 92 patients who had physiotherapy: in group I (n = 62) twice before and four hours after physiotherapy treatment, in group II (n = 30) before, directly after and four hours after treatment. The questionnaire consisted of questions to determine (a) the quality and intensity, (b) the localisation and evolution of the pain, (c) the effects of the pain on quality of life and further (d) visual analog pain intensity scales. Subsets of questions were combined into nine indices. For all indices on all three occasions Cronbach's alpha coefficients were determined. Moreover, test-retest correlation coefficients were determined between the scores of the first and second, the first and third, and the second and third occasions.
RESULTS: The test-retest correlations of the nine indices and the visual analog pain intensity scales ranged from 0.62 to 0.93 (median: 0.84). Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the indices varied between 0.61 and 0.85 (median: 0.72).
CONCLUSION: The MPQ-DLV is a reliable instrument for measuring pain.