Understanding links between aging adults, families, and chronic pain: measurement challenges and potential solutions

Objectives Psychosocial risk and resilience factors are powerful determinants of chronic pain trajectories and lived experiences. Yet, a key source of support or stress for most people—close family relationships—remains a relatively untapped area of pain intervention, particularly for midlife and aging adults. In this article, we discuss methodological approaches to advance research identifying family-specific impacts on chronic pain in later life. Methods We present two persistent measurement challenges in studying family-specific contributors to pain: (1) linear and traditional notions of family conceptualization marked by limited considerations of community and intergenerational context, particularly in regards to aging families; and (2) a broad operationalization of ’social support ,' which is defined ambiguously and inconsistently across the literature and which often prioritizes marital or intimate partner relationships as having overriding importance for determining health (including pain) for adults. These consistent gaps prevent the formulation of testable family-pain hypotheses and limit our ability to build a solid body of evidence explicating how rich and dynamic family environments may protect against, or worsen, pain outcomes in older adulthood. Results We propose measurement solutions, including a theoretically-driven approach to conceptualizing family emotional. We outline potential analytic strategies for testing family-pain pathways and consider potential statistical challenges. Discussion Innovative research to identify family contributors to chronic pain may be limited by methodological challenges often inherent to family research. The proposed measurement solutions have the potential to contribute to advancing pain research and the optimization of family-based pain management interventions particularly for aging adults.