On 2014 Oct 21, Carl L von Baeyer commented:

Potentially a very important finding. However, it should be read with caution. Table 2 indicates a range of 6-8 for VAS. This is problematic in four ways: (a) VAS is not listed among the measures, which were a faces scale and a numerical rating scale. (b) Perhaps what is meant by "VAS" is actually a combination of scores on the faces scale and the numerical rating scale. But these different scales cannot be combined as if they were the same thing. They should be reported separately unless a rationale is provided for treating them as the same. (c) The idea that ALL 82 subjects with a chronic illness used only the scores 6, 7 or 8 (out of the 11 scores available on the self-report scale) is not plausible: this would represent an extraordinarily unlikely restriction of range on the 0-10 metric, or else there was some bias in the way the question was asked. (d) If all scores were 6, 7 or 8, then the mean could not have been greater than 8 as reported in the abstract. I'd invite the authors to check this line of Table 2 before the paper is finalized. Thank you.

On 2014 Oct 21, Carl L von Baeyer commented:

Potentially a very important finding. However, it should be read with caution. Table 2 indicates a range of 6-8 for VAS. This is problematic in four ways: (a) VAS is not listed among the measures, which were a faces scale and a numerical rating scale. (b) Perhaps what is meant by "VAS" is actually a combination of scores on the faces scale and the numerical rating scale. But these different scales cannot be combined as if they were the same thing. They should be reported separately unless a rationale is provided for treating them as the same. (c) The idea that ALL 82 subjects with a chronic illness used only the scores 6, 7 or 8 (out of the 11 scores available on the self-report scale) is not plausible: this would represent an extraordinarily unlikely restriction of range on the 0-10 metric, or else there was some bias in the way the question was asked. (d) If all scores were 6, 7 or 8, then the mean could not have been greater than 8 as reported in the abstract. I'd invite the authors to check this line of Table 2 before the paper is finalized. Thank you.