THi Heather,
This cam from the Dutch ZIB models
https://zibs.nl/wiki/PainScore-v4.0(2020EN)
The score is a general measurement of pain experience, not a description of specific, localized pain.
Depending on the measuring method used, it indicates the level of pain experienced by the patient on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 = no pain and 10 = the worst pain imaginable. No descriptions are used for the intermediate values, so that the value is displayed as a number and not as a code.
Sometimes a value range of 0-100 is used instead of 0-10."
and digging a little further
For what it’s worth I share your clinical view that 71 vs 72 is pretty meaningless, nevertheless 0…100 does seem to be fairly established. Tom’s suggestion of using Proportion initially seemed counter-intuitive but I can see how it does solve the problem, though I would question whether comparing different VAS scores with different ranges is going to be a real-world requirement. A lot will depend on the content of the question, not just the response.