A possible approach would be to use self-reports (the thing that doctor’s always ask about, pain scale 1-10) vs revealed preferences (how much painkillers were requested? What trade-offs for pain relief do patients choose?).
Obviously this kind of relation is flawed on several levels: Reported pain scale depends a lot on personal experience (very painful events permanently change the scale, ala “I am in so much pain that I cannot walk or concentrate, but compared to my worst experience… let’s say 3?”). Revealed preferences depend a lot on how much people care about the alternatives (e.g. if people have bad health insurance or really important stuff to do they might accept a lot of subjective suffering in order to get out of hospital one day early). Likewise, time preference might enter a lot into revealed preference.
Despite these shortcomings, that’s where I would start thinking about what such a ratio would mean. If one actually did a study with new questionaires, one should definitely ask patients for some examples in order to gauge their personal pain-scale, and combine actual revealed preferences with answers to hypothetical questions “how much money would pain relief be worth to you? How much risk of death? How many days of early hospital release? etc”, even if the offer is not actually on the table.
Apparently there have been a few studies on something like this: “[Long-Term Meditators], compared to novices, had a significant reduction of self-reported unpleasantness, but not intensity, of painful stimuli, while practicing Open Monitoring.”
Regarding measurement of pain:suffering ratio
A possible approach would be to use self-reports (the thing that doctor’s always ask about, pain scale 1-10) vs revealed preferences (how much painkillers were requested? What trade-offs for pain relief do patients choose?).
Obviously this kind of relation is flawed on several levels: Reported pain scale depends a lot on personal experience (very painful events permanently change the scale, ala “I am in so much pain that I cannot walk or concentrate, but compared to my worst experience… let’s say 3?”). Revealed preferences depend a lot on how much people care about the alternatives (e.g. if people have bad health insurance or really important stuff to do they might accept a lot of subjective suffering in order to get out of hospital one day early). Likewise, time preference might enter a lot into revealed preference.
Despite these shortcomings, that’s where I would start thinking about what such a ratio would mean. If one actually did a study with new questionaires, one should definitely ask patients for some examples in order to gauge their personal pain-scale, and combine actual revealed preferences with answers to hypothetical questions “how much money would pain relief be worth to you? How much risk of death? How many days of early hospital release? etc”, even if the offer is not actually on the table.
Apparently there have been a few studies on something like this: “[Long-Term Meditators], compared to novices, had a significant reduction of self-reported unpleasantness, but not intensity, of painful stimuli, while practicing Open Monitoring.”