ABSTRACT
This chapter is a comprehensive reference manual providing information on the multidimensional pain scale: McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ), which is a rating scale designed to assess multiple dimensions of the experience of pain. R. Melzack defined relevant domains as sensory-discriminative, motivational-affective and cognitive-evaluative. For the development of the short form of the MPQ “the strategy was to select a small representative set of words from the sensory and affective categories of the standard form, and to use the present pain intensity and visual analogue scale to provide indices of overall intensity”. A brief history of the instrument's development is provided, along with a description of item content and administration/scoring procedures. Psychometric properties are reviewed and a critical commentary is provided. Key references are cited and in most cases the actual scale is included, giving the reader easy access to the instrument.
