Date sent: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 Selecting a Fatigue Rating Scale By Fred Friedberg, PhD and Leonard A. Jason, PhD Measuring changes in patient fatigue levels is essential to the proper treatment and research of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). However, the term "fatigue" continues to elude precise definition or objective measurement in the research literature. Because of this, the patient’s reported perception of his or her fatigue has become the focus of fatigue measures. There remains no "gold standard" of fatigue severity available to validate fatigue scales, nor can these measures distinguish fatigue related to physical exertion, emotional stress, pain, sleep disturbance, depression or the poorly understood causal mechanisms of CFS. Fortunately, recently developed measures of subjectively experienced fatigue, modeled after the measurement of other subjective states (e.g., pain, anxiety), have multiple applications in clinical and research settings. Based on a previous review of fatigue instruments1 as well as more recent data, this article describes selected fatigue measures for two categories of fatigue scales (fatigue intensity and fatigue/function), and concludes with recommendations about the use of fatigue scales by clinicians and researchers. Read the complete article at http://cfids.org/archives/2002rr/2002-rr4-article02.asp [AOL: Read it here]