Validity and reliability study of the geriatric pain measure in elderly individuals

The aim of this metodological study was test the reliability and validity of the Turkish Geriatric Pain Measure. The research has been done with 244 outpatients who were treated in Units of Akdeniz University Hospital between March 1, 2012 and June 10, 2012. Mini Mental State Examination Test, the forms that contain patients? personal information were prepared by the researcher and Geriatric Pain Measure were used as the data tools. All data were collected by the author during face-to-face interviews.Translation and back-translation technique were used for the psycholinguistic validity of the Turkish version of the inventory. The criterion validity of the Geriatric Pain Measure Turkish version was determined by item analysis based on differences between averages of upper-lower group item scores. When the mean scores of items of the upper and lower groups of the inventory were examined, the differences between groups were found statistically significant (t=38.597 p= 0.000). Exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the construction validity of the inventory. According to the results of factor analysis, the orginal scale with the Turkish version of the subscales were similar. The internal consistency and item analysis were used to determine the reliability of the Geriatric Pain Measure Turkish version. Cronbach?s alpha coefficients of the inventory was found 0.85, in item analysis of the inventory results, Cronbach's alpha values of subscales were between 0.67 - 0.93. All of the correlations between inventory items were significantly higher. Positive correlations were observed between the variables. In our study, the avarage Geriatric Pain Scale scores of the elderly was found that 48.8% (n = 119) had mild pain, 43% (n = 105) had moderate pain, 8.2% (n = 20) had severe pain.As a result Geriatric Pain Measure Turkish version was found to be a reliable and valid means to measure the quality, severity, physical, emotional, psychosocial and behavioural dimensions of pain in elderly. In line with the results obtained from the research, it is recommended that the Geriatric Pain Measure Turkish version should be applied on different groups with different socio-demographic features and the validity and reliability of analysis should be examined.Key Words: Geriatric Pain Measure, validity, reliability, nursing.