The original instrument was created by Jensen et al. (1987), and was later adapted for children and adolescents by Engel et al. (2012). It measures the different attitudes of children and adolescents in pain. It is made up of different subscales, each one of which assesses different attitudes when suffering from pain:

Control: the belief that you can control your pain.

Medical cure: the belief that there is a medical cure for your pain problem.

Solicitude: the belief that other people should respond solicitously to your pain (for example, by paying you more attention or allowing you not to do certain tasks).

Medication: the belief that medication is an appropriate treatment for chronic pain.

Emotion: the belief that emotions have an impact on pain.

Harm: the belief that pain means that the organism has been damaged and physical activity or exercise must be avoided.

Disability: the belief that you cannot function or perform daily activities because of the pain.

The Catalan version of the SOPA-ped created by the ALGOS group is made up of 29 items with three different Likert-type responses (I disagree, I’m not sure or I don’t know, I agree). In terms of its psychometric properties, it has proven to be a reliable and valid instrument (Miró et al, 2009).

Miró, J., Huguet, A. & Jensen, M.P. (2014). Pain Beliefs Predict Pain Intensity and Pain Status in Children: Usefulness of the Pediatric Version of the Survey of Pain Attitudes. Pain Medicine. doi: 10.1111/pme.12316.

Engel, J. M., Jensen, M. P., Ciol, M. a, & Bolen, G. M. (2012). The development and preliminary validation of the pediatric survey of pain attitudes. American journal of physical medicine & rehabilitation / Association of Academic Physiatrists, 91(2), 114–21.

Engel J, Bolen G, McNamee J, Pitts J, Ciol M, Jensen M. (2007). The development and preliminary validation of the pediatric survey of pain attitudes. J of Pain; 8 (supl.1): S56, (poster presented  in the 26th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Pain Society, May 5-7 2007,  Washington D.C., United States). 

Jensen, M. P., Karoly, P., & Huger, R. (1987). The development and preliminary validation of an instrument to assess patients’ attitudes toward pain. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 31(3), 393–400.