Measurement properties of pain scoring instruments in farm animals: A systematic review protocol using the COSMIN checklist
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Society has been increasingly concerned about the impact of pain on farm animal welfare. This systematic review aims to provide evidence relating to the measurement properties (i.e. reliability, validity, and sensitivity) of pain scoring instruments used for pain assessment in farm animals. A literature search will be performed using five databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, CAB abstracts and Biological Abstracts) and search terms related to pain, pain scales and different species of farm animals. Eligibility criteria will include full-text studies on the development and/or validation of acute and chronic pain scoring instruments for farm animals including bovine (beef and dairy), ovine, caprine, camel, swine and poultry. Exclusion criteria will include studies that report the use of pain scales for the validation of another instrument, or those reporting ethograms/list of behaviors potentially indicating pain without a scoring system. Study titles and their abstracts will be screened for eligibility by one investigator. Full-text articles will be independently reviewed for eligibility and evaluated by two investigators. Relevant information will be recorded and evaluated systematically according to the Consensus-based Standards for the Selection of Health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) checklist using an adapted data collection sheet. The following measurement properties and characteristics of the instruments will be assessed: content validity (internal consistency, structural and cross-cultural validity), reliability, measurement error, criterion and construct validity, responsiveness, interpretability and feasibility. Following the assessment of methodological quality and quality of the findings, evidence for each measurement property will be summarized into high, moderate, low or very low. This systematic review will provide further insights into the evidence-based measurement properties of pain scoring instruments in farm animals. It may identify possible gaps of knowledge with these tools as a potential target for future studies in farm animals with a positive impact on animal welfare.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.123 | 0.127 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.018 | 0.016 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.024 | 0.016 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.029 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".