""On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?" If you've suffered an injury or painful illness, you've probably heard this question. It is quick and to the point. It is, however, not a good method to measure pain. It can't compare across people. Your "three" might be my "five." It depends on experience and changes throughout life."
"We drew inspiration from economics research, where money is routinely used to measure preferences. In three experiments, we invited around 300 people to the lab and administered small, controlled amounts of pain (with ethical committee approval, of course). One experiment used small electrical shocks. In another, we applied heat to small skin areas (but no burns!). We asked the standard "On a scale of one to ten, how much did it hurt?" and similar questions"
Traditional 1–10 pain scales are unreliable and fail to allow comparison across individuals because people interpret numeric ratings differently and adapt over time. Those scales remain routine in clinical trials and shape evaluations of painkillers and treatments. Monetary willingness-to-accept measures adapt economic preference elicitation to pain assessment, creating a common scale that links pain to tradeoffs. Controlled laboratory experiments with about 300 participants using small electrical shocks and heat stimuli demonstrate that monetary measures dramatically improve accuracy and comparability of pain measurement across people.
Read at Psychology Today
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