A functional measurement approach to the children's anxiety and pain scale-CAPS

• Author(s): Batalha, Luís Manuel da Cunha ; Oliveira, Armando Luis Dinis Mónica ; Grácio, Joana Catarina Gonçalves ; Fernandes, Ananda Maria ; Viegas, Ricardo
• Date: 2014
• Origin: Repositório Científico da Escola Superior de Enfermagem de Coimbra
• Subject(s): anxiety; pain; scale; nursing
• Document Type: Article
• Language: Portuguese

Description

the CAPS is a set of two faces scales, composed of 5 drawn faces each, for assessing pain and anxiety/fear in chldren aged from 4 to 10. Indication lack on how these towo dimensions of pain and anxiety might combine in an overall experience of distress, about their relative importnce, on how they are modulated by previous pain experiences, and as regards the perceptual metrics of the two sets of scales ( often assumed to be equal-inteval for pratical purposes). In this study the two sets of facses werw taken as factors in an integration task, and theirs levels combined factorially, originating 25 pairs of expressions (see Fig 1). The way children integrate information coming from theses two sources (anxiety and pain faces) was investigated and provided a basis for proper quantification of both importance and scale values.