Reproducibility and diagnostic accuracy of the Unesp-Botucatu Feline Pain Scale and the visual analogue scale among laypeople, cat owners, students and experienced veterinarians
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the reproducibility and diagnostic accuracy of the Unesp-Botucatu Feline Pain Scale short form (UFEPS-SF) and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) among untrained laypersons, cat owners, veterinary students and experienced veterinarians. STUDY DESIGN: Blind and randomized. ANIMALS: Videos of 10 female cats. METHODS: Three self-declared female and three male raters were included per group of experienced veterinarians, students, cat owners and laypersons (n = 24). Participants assessed 40 videos of female cats that underwent ovariohysterectomy: preoperative, postoperative, post-rescue analgesia, and 24 hours postoperatively. A multilevel generalized linear model followed by Bonferroni post hoc test was used to evaluate differences in UFEPS-SF scores between groups. Interobserver agreement was calculated by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between pairs of observers within each group. Area under the curve (AUC) for the receiver operating characteristic curves, specificity (no pain) and sensitivity (pain) were calculated. RESULTS: ICC for UFEPS-SF was higher for veterinarians and students than for laypersons and cat owners, although all results were very good (≥0.81). Reliability of the VAS was very good for experienced observers only. Females assigned higher median scores than males only at 24 hours postoperatively. UFEPS-SF specificity [confidence interval (CI)] and sensitivity (CI) were 0.83-1 (0.7-1) and 0.98-1 (0.91-1), respectively, and diagnostic accuracy [AUC (CI)] was excellent across all groups [0.99-1 (0.97-1)], with no significant differences between groups. The predictive capacity (AUC) of the VAS followed the order: experienced > students > cat owners = laypersons. VAS AUC values were lower than those of UFEPS-SF. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The UFEPS-SF can be reliably used by untrained laypersons, cat owners and students with no experience to identify acute postoperative pain in cats. The reproducibility, sensitivity and diagnostic accuracy of the VAS were suboptimal and inferior to those of the UFEPS-SF, except among experienced observers.
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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 | 0.014 | 0.039 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".