Abstract

MORETTI, Luciana Sofía; MEDRANO, Leonardo Adrián  and  BASLER, Heinz-Dieter. Validation of the Pain Locus of Control Questionnaire in Argentinean University Students with Headaches. Pensam. psicol. [online]. 2015, vol.13, n.1, pp.27-38. ISSN 1657-8961.  https://doi.org/10.11144/Javerianacali.PPSI13-1.vclc.

Objective. This study aims to validate the Pain Locus of Control Questionnaire (PLCQ) in Argentinean university students with recurrent headaches. Method. 382 university students were intentionally selected, 77.7% were females and the 22.3% males, with an average age of 22.4 years old (SD= 4.2). Psychometric studies were developed to evaluate internal structure, internal consistency and external validity. Results. Exploratory factor analysis revealed a factor structure of three dimensions that explained the 39.79% of variance: (1) health professional's external locus of control, (2) hazardous locus of control and (3) internal locus of control. Additionally, Cronbach's α values were observed to be optimal for the three factors of the scale (among 0.80 and 0.86). Although, Pearson's coefficients calculated to evaluate external validity revealed that the factors "health professionals' external locus of control" and "random external locus of control" were significantly and positively correlated to pain intensity (r=0.15_/ p<0.01; r= 0.23, p<0.01, respectively), they turned out to be low. Conclusion. The psychometric studies developed in this study suggest that the PLCQ is reliable and valid to be used with Argentinean university students with recurrent headaches. However this study is preliminary, therefore more studies are needed to supplement these findings and to improve its lack of external validity.

Keywords : Headache; psychometrics; cognition; pain; validity studies.

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