For Cat Owners |
THE IMPORTANCE OF VALIDATION
On the surface of it, a feline pain questionnaire may seem very easy to produce. Nevertheless, to have confidence in using such a tool, one must know that:
It reliably and consistently measures what needs to be measured, and
Its observations pick up clinically significant changes in the targeted cat population, in this case cats with painful chronic joint disorders.
The validation process provides this assurance for owners and clinicians. Moreover, only the FMPI has been specifically validated as a diagnostic for cats suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain.
This necessary process of validation consists of several stages:
- Careful formulation of the initial tool by all stakeholders (in this case, owners, veterinarians) so it has ‘face validity’ – everyone agrees it is on the right track
- Readability–easily understood by those using it;
- Reliability (Reproducibility)–its ability to deliver consistent results when applied by many observers on many animals
- Content Validity–inclusion of all relevant external “markers” that are related to a condition with sufficient sensitivity to discriminate, over time:
- the presence and severity of the condition,
- changes to that condition, and
- improvement (or lack thereof) in the animal’s quality of life.
- Criterion or Concurrent Validity–the correlation of an instrument with some other measure, a measure accepted as the ‘gold standard’. With cats, because pain cannot (yet) be directly measured, ”markers” of pain include objective measures of:
- Ability to perform activities–e.g. inability/less desire to jump,
- Overall activity e.g. measured with an activity monitor
- Circulating biomarkers of pain (still being developed!)
True to their nature, these can all be signs of cats protecting themselves, attempting to mask their pain, and thereby indicating the potential of pain.