Objective To develop and psychometrically test an owner self-administered questionnaire designed to assess severity and impact of chronic pain in dogs with osteoarthritis. lower severity and interference scores than dogs with osteoarthritis. Conclusions and Clinical Relevance A psychometrically sound instrument was developed. Responsiveness testing must be conducted to determine whether the questionnaire will be useful in UNC0379 manufacture reliably obtaining quantifiable assessments from owners regarding the severity and impact of chronic pain and its treatment on dogs with osteoarthritis. It is crucial to have quantitative measures of chronic pain that are valid and reliable in clinical patients to enable development and testing of interventions (such as drugs or surgical procedures) designed to reduce such pain. In the past, studies designed to test the efficacy of interventions intended to decrease chronic pain in dogs with osteoarthritis have relied heavily on a veterinarians assessment of lameness supported by values generated through gait analysis by use of a force plate. When collected properly, data on gait analysis offer an objective measure that can be reliably monitored over time; however, it can be extremely time consuming, requires specialized gear, and relies on relatively strict inclusion criteria. In addition, these measures only evaluate an animal at 1 specific point in time, and weight bearing on an affected limb is only 1 part of the much larger picture of chronic pain in dogs with osteoarthritis.1C5 When an owner brings a dog to a veterinarian with a concern that the dog has signs of a chronic painful condition, they report a number of behaviors that they attribute to the painful condition (eg, no longer climbs stairs or jumps onto the bed). In monitoring the progression of the dogs condition over time, veterinarians rely heavily on an owners report of improvement in the dogs pain-related behaviors following the initiation of treatment (which most often involves a nonsteroi-dal anti-inflammatory drug). When an owner reports improvement in pain-related behaviors without substantial adverse effects, veterinarians continue to offer the treatment. However, when an owner reports no improvement in pain-related behaviors, veterinarians may increase the dose of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug or switch to another medication. Although an owners detailed assessment of chronic pain is routinely relied on in clinical decision making for the management of osteoarthritis pain, it is not used routinely as an outcome measure in clinical trials designed to evaluate interventions for osteoarthritis pain.1C9 This apparently is attributable to the subjective nature of an owners assessment; however, sound methods exist for the development and application of tools to assess and quantify peoples perception of subjective says. 10C12 Although pain behaviors are the result of a complex set of inputs and qualities unique to each animal, appropriate, established principles of questionnaire development10C18 can be used to develop valid and reliable behavior-based assessment instruments for owner appraisal of chronic pain in dogs. Instrument (questionnaire) development involves the generation of items (questions) that represent theoretic constructs (ie, factors). In the study reported here, the construct we were attempting UNC0379 manufacture to assess with the questions posed was an owners perception of chronic pain associated with osteoarthritis in their doggie. Therefore, the items were generated through focus groups of owners of dogs with UNC0379 manufacture osteoarthritis and then reviewed by veterinarians who routinely manage dogs with the disease. Once items are generated, factor analysis can be used to investigate which aspects of chronic pain may be represented by the questions that are asked; then, the instrument is usually subjected to validity and reliability testing.10,11,19 It must be established that this data-gathering instrument will target the characteristic it is designed Rabbit Polyclonal to LRG1 to measure (ie, chronic pain in dogs with osteoarthritis), which is defined as the validity of the instrument. In UNC0379 manufacture addition, the instrument must measure the characteristic it is designed to measure in a consistent manner. The pattern of consistency is referred to as reliability.10,11,19 The study reported here was performed to develop and then conduct psychometric (validity and reliability) testing of an instrument (ie, the CBPI) designed to measure chronic pain in dogs with osteoarthritis. The CBPI was intended as an owner-completed instrument designed to reliably quantify the owners perceptions of the severity and impact of chronic pain on their dogs with osteoarthritis. Materials and Methods Procedures Standard methods for the development and psychometric testing of instruments designed to assess subjective says10C13,15,18C37 were used for development.