The investigators will evaluate a convenience sample of patients presenting to the ED with a complaint of pain. Patients will be consented for participation and will fill out a brief survey concerning the current visit in the ED. There will be two forms of the survey. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two survey forms. Participants will first be asked if their pain score for this visit is greater than or less than an anchor number provided. In this survey, the investigators will use 20 and 80 as our anchoring numbers. The participants will then have a follow up question asking them to estimate their pain score on a 0-100 scale. Investigators will then perform a chart review to determine patient satisfaction scores for that specific visit to determine if the anchoring effect has any input on patient satisfaction scores.
The proposed research will be a prospective, observational study to test the hypothesis that anchoring will affect verbal pain scores in the emergency department. There will be a small retrospective aspect to this study to obtain patient satisfaction ratings.