Patient reported outcome measures of pain intensity: Do they tell us what we need to know?

(1) Chronic pain patients' elicited beliefs and strategies concerning how they complete pain intensity questionnaires are sometimes, but not invariably, reflected in their responses to these measures. Thus, purely qualitative methodologies alone cannot provide completely reliable information and point to the need to use a “mixed methods” approach combining both qualitative and quantitative data; (2) the lack of association between pain intensity measures and interference with activities of daily living, as well as relative insensitivity to different etiologies underlines the problem in relying on pain intensity measures as the primary means of evaluating the success of a treatment, either for pain management or in clinical research.