PEG-3 Score Assessing Pain Intensity and Interference (Pain, Enjoyment, General Activity)

PEG scale, is a pain scale based on the Brief Pain Inventory scale and it is used for quickly, yet thoroughly, assessing and monitoring chronic pain in primary care settings.

Instruction: For each of the following aspects, please select the point on the scale that you feel is most appropriate in describing you on a scale from No Pain / Does not interfere(0) to Pain as bad as you can imagine / Completely interferes (10).

1

What number best describes your pain on average in the past week?

No PainPain as bad as you can imagine
2

What number best describes how, during the past week, pain has interfered with your enjoyment of life?

Does not interfereCompletely interferes
3

What number best describes how, during the past week, pain has interfered with your general activity?

Does not interfereCompletely interferes
4

Do you have radiating pain?

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Steps on how to print your input & results:

1. Fill in the calculator/tool with your values and/or your answer choices and press Calculate.

2. Then you can click on the Print button to open a PDF in a separate window with the inputs and results. You can further save the PDF or print it.

Please note that once you have closed the PDF you need to click on the Calculate button before you try opening it again, otherwise the input and/or results may not appear in the pdf.

PEG has been created to facilitate adequate pain assessment in primary care settings where the use of multidimensional pain measures (which are often complex to administer and score) may be impractical.

PEG consists of three questions that focus on:

  • Perceived degree of pain (visual scale from 0 to 10, where the higher the number the greater the severity of pain);
  • Pain interference with enjoyment of life (visual scale from 0 – no interference to 10 – complete interference);
  • Pain interference with general activity (visual scale from 0 – no interference to 10 – complete interference).

A mean score of the three responses is calculated to retrieve the overall impact of pain where the higher the score, the greater the impact.

PEG is best used as a monitoring instrument when assessing response and suitability of pain management and should decrease over time as individual responds to appropriate therapy. PEG was found to be sensitive to change and can differentiate between patients with and without pain improvement at 6 months.

Reliability of the PEG was α = 0.73 and 0.89 in the two study samples of the original study and construct validity was good for various pain-specific measures when comparable with the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI).

Specialty: Pain Management

Abbreviation: PEG-3