The development of a new measure: The impact of female chronic pelvic pain questionnaire (IF-CPPQ) Seminar

Event details

Chronic pelvic pain (CPP) is one of the most common pain conditions experienced by women and is associated with a number of conditions, including endometriosis, vulvodynia, and irritable bowel syndrome. Currently no measure exists to assess the impact of CPP on women’s lives. Therefore, a new questionnaire has been developed. This talk will discuss studies that lead to the development of the new measure. Firstly, a qualitative study was conducted to explore the impact of CPP on women’s lives (N=25, Mean age, range: 36.6, 22-63). Eleven main themes were identified, encompassing the impact of CPP on everyday functioning, work, social life, and emotional consequences of the pain. The themes from the qualitative study were used to inform the development of the new questionnaire: The Impact of Female-CPP questionnaire (IF-CPPQ). Think aloud interviews were then conducted to obtain feedback from women with CPP on the draft questionnaire (N=10). A final study was conducted with 969 women with CPP to assess the psychometric properties (including the validity and reliability) of the newly developed questionnaire. Exploratory factor and Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to assess the factor structure of the IF-CPPQ, and the consistency and model fit of the resulting factor structure respectively. The final factor structure consisted of five factors or subscales, all with good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ranged between 0.72-0.91). Correlations were conducted between the subscales and validated questionnaires that assessed related constructs such as quality of life, pain disability, anxiety and depression, and sexual satisfaction. These correlations indicated good convergent and discriminant validity. The talk will end with an overview of limitations and further directions of this research.