Self-Reported Questionnaire Assesses Migraine’s Effect on Work

A new self-reported questionnaire called HEADWORK is designed to better gauge the amount and severity of work-related task difficulties among patients with migraine. Researchers reported on its validation in The Journal of Headache and Pain.

“The degree to which work-related difficulties are recognized in headache research is poor and often carried out with inadequate information such as ‘reduced ability to work as usual,’” researchers wrote, “which do[es] not capture at all the variety of difficulties and the factors that impact over them.”

Researchers developed a set of items based on a literature review as well as patient focus groups and tested in on patients with episodic and chronic migraine at eight different headache centers in Italy. The validation sample included 373 patients, most of whom experienced episodic migraine without aura and were female.

Results showed that two scales were sufficient to measure the dimensions involved in the negative influence of migraine on work. The “work-related difficulties” scale consists of 11 items that address the degree to which migraine headaches lead to difficulty in general skills and tasks. The “factors contributing to work difficulties” scale includes six items that assess the degree to which factors such as workplace noise and brightness or coworkers’ attitudes have a negative impact.   

“Thus, with the validation process, we reduced the amount of items from the initial number of 25 to the final number of 17,” researchers wrote, “and both HEADWORK subscales showed good measurement properties, with higher scores being associated to higher impact levels.”

—Jolynn Tumolo

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