The quality of life in the menopausal women

Lee, Ka Young; Park, Tae Jin

Abstract

BACKGROUND: This study was performed to document the reliability and the validity of the Korean version of the Women's Health Questionnaire(WHQ), and to evaluate the quality of life experienced during menopause.
METHODS
The subjects of this study were 161 women (premenopause 61, peri/postmenopause 100) between the ages of 40 and 65 years who visited the office of Family Medicine department in Pusan Paik Hospital The instruments consisted of the WHQ, the Nottingham Health Profile(NHP), the Self-rating Anxiety Scale(SAS), and the Self-rating Depression Scale(SDS). We evaluated the internal consistency of the instruments and the correlations between the WHQ and other scales. Then, we compared the scales between the premenopausal women and the peri/postmenopausal women. Finally, we found predictable variables explaining the quality of life.
RESULTS
The Cronbach's a value showed 0.8060 for the WHQ. The correlation coefficient of the WHQ was 0.724 with the NHP, 0.760 with the SAS, and 0.704 with the SDS. The peri/postmenopausal women perceived more severely than the premenopausal women in the WHQ areas of sexual functioning (P=0.003), vasomotor symptoms(P=0.004), and sleep(P=0.022) as well as in the NHP areas of physical mobility(P=0.005), sleep(P=0.001), and total score(P=0.002). However, stress level was more important predictor of scores of questionnaires than peri/postmenopausal status in stepwise multiple regression analysis.
CONCLUSIONS
This data suggest that we should pay attention to stress level, sociodemographic status when we consider the quality of life in the menopausal women.