Students' Understanding and Beliefs About Pain Before and After a One-day Pain Science Education Conference: an Intervention

Students' Understanding and Beliefs About Pain Before and After a One-day Pain Science Education Conference: a Mixed-methods Evaluation

The beliefs held by students lead to behaviours in response to their pain which can be both helpful or a hindrance to how they manage their pain. The one-day education event aims to educate the cohort on the contemporary scientific understanding of persistent pain using a mixture of methods. It is hoped this event will result in an improvement in the alignment of beliefs and behaviours to contemporary understanding of persistent pain.

The principal aim is to evaluate the pre-post knowledge and beliefs about pain following a one-day pain education event in year 12 students, aged 16 or above.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Pain, Chronic
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Pain science education

Detailed Description

The students will be asked to complete questionnaires three times relating to their understanding and beliefs relating and intended behaviour in the presence of pain. Once at the start of the conference and once at the end, then finally after 3 months. The questionnaire will gather demographic information (age, gender, ethnicity and any history of persistent pain). There will also be a series of multiple-choice questions relating to knowledge and beliefs about persistent pain. The three time points of questionnaire completion will see the students complete the same questionnaire except they will not have to repeat demographic questions. The questionnaire should take 5-10 minutes to complete each time. The questionnaires will be provided online and links will be provided to participants.

This is a non-randomised controlled trial and a second school selected as it is part of the same group of schools and equally matched according to the English Indices of Deprivation 2019. This school will complete the survey at the same time points.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 167
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United Kingdom
  • Middlesbrough, United Kingdom, TS1 3BX
    • Teesside University

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 16 years and older (Child, Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Students at two specified schools in North Yorkshire who had been offered the pain study day in year 12 or are in the intervention or control school in year 12 or 13
• Aged above 16.
• Providing consent to participate.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Students not providing consent.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: Non-Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control; No intervention
Experimental: Pain education day; Pain education day, lecture and experiential	Other: Pain science education; High school students receiving a day of pain science education in multiple formats, lectures, experiential, completing a task which consolidates the information.; Other Names: Pain neuroscience education

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Pain Beliefs Questionnaire (PBQ)	Helps to identify if participant beliefs are biomedical or biopsychosocial focussed, 12-item (Edwards et al, 1992, Walsh and Radcliffe, 2002). There are 2 scales within the PBQ: the organic beliefs scale has 8 items, with score ranges from 8-48, lower scores indicate less biomedical views and higher scores indicate more biomedical views. The psychological scale within the PBQ has 4 items with a score range of 4-24, a higher score indicates more biopsychosocial beliefs about pain and a lower score indicates less biopsychosocial beliefs.	3 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Concept of Pain Inventory-Adult (COPI-Adult)	The Concept of Pain Inventory-Adult was designed for assessing knowledge and beliefs about pain science (Pate et al, 2022). It is a 13-item questionnaire. Higher COPI-Adult scores reflect greater alignment with contemporary pain science (Total scores can range from 0-52).	3 months

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Vignette	Participants will be asked what actions they would take if they had pain with regards to medication, scans, daily activity, exercise and work either based on yes/no answers or four to five multiple choice answers. The percentage of recommendations in keeping with guidelines were measured from 0-100% with lower scores indicating intended behaviours that were not in keeping with guidelines.	3 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Teesside University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): March 2, 2023
• Primary Completion (Actual): March 2, 2023
• Study Completion (Actual): June 2, 2023

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: February 1, 2023
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: February 1, 2023
• First Posted (Actual): February 10, 2023

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): July 20, 2023
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 18, 2023
• Last Verified: July 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: pain knowledge; pain beliefs; pain behaviour; experience of intervention
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Pain; Neurologic Manifestations; Chronic Pain
• Other Study ID Numbers: 2022 Oct 11360 Mankelow

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No