[tucaz]

I have pretty much no knowledge about statistics and surveys but it is my understanding that it doesn’t matter how much you try to quantify a subjective question it will always be a “snapshot” of people’s feelings without any objective way to verify it.

It also seems like this is not a problem and people will still use this to make decisions. Example: politic polls, president approval ratings, etc.

These are all subjective measurements that are somewhat actionable based on “feelings”.

For the pain scale it doesn’t seem like it makes sense to rate it at 1-10 rating and I think about that every time I pay a visit to the doctors office and they ask about that. My guess is that they are not after the objective number, but the subjective information they can get from the number you give + how you behave.