Abstract
Objectives The assessment of health care professionals’ attitudes and beliefs towards musculoskeletal pain is essential because they are key determinants of their clinical practice behaviour. The Pain Attitudes and Beliefs Scale (PABS) biomedical scale evaluates the degree of health professionals’ biomedical orientation towards musculoskeletal pain and was never assessed using item response theory (IRT). This study aimed at assessing the psychometric performance of the 10-item biomedical scale of the PABS scale using IRT. Methods Two cross-sectional samples (BeBack, n = 1016; DABS; n = 958) of health care professionals working in the UK were analysed. Mokken scale analysis (nonparametric IRT) and common factor analysis were used to assess dimensionality of the instrument. Parametric IRT was used to assess model fit, item parameters, and local reliability (measurement precision). Results Results were largely similar in the two samples and the scale was found to be unidimensional. The graded response model showed adequate fit, covering a broad range of the measured construct in terms of item difficulty. Item 3 showed some misfit but only in the DABS sample. Some items (i.e. 7, 8 and 9) displayed remarkably higher discrimination parameters than others (4, 5 and 10). The scale showed satisfactory measurement precision (reliability > 0.70) between theta values -2 and +3. Discussion The 10-item biomedical scale of the PABS displayed adequate psychometric performance in two large samples of health care professionals, and it is suggested to assess group-level professionals degree of biomedical orientation towards musculoskeletal pain.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0202539 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-17 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 12 Sept 2018 |
Funding
This work was supported by the EMGO+ Institute for Health and Care Research (Amsterdam, Netherlands) that awarded a travel grant to A. Chiarotto to spend an academic visit at the Research Institute for Primary Care and Health Sciences at Keele University (Keele, United Kingdom). A. Bishop, K. Duncan and N.E. Foster have received funding for the DABS study from Arthritis Research UK through the UK Primary Care Centre (Ref grant: 20202). N.E. Foster and A. Bishop are funded through an NIHR Research Professorship for N.E. Foster (NIHR-RP-011-015). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Office of Environmental Management | |
| Darlington Primary Care Trust | 20202 |
| National Institute for Health Research |
