Psychology and Health Research Unit; ISPA-Instituto Universitário, Rua Jardim do Tabaco 34, Lisbon, Portugal.
Climacteric. 2012 Apr;15(2):143-52. doi: 10.3109/13697137.2011.590617. Epub 2011 Oct 13.
Menopausal instruments usually assess the frequency or intensity of symptoms. The present study develops and validates an inventory to assess the severity of menopausal symptoms through the measurement of their frequency and intensity, and explores the differences between women with different menopausal status.
A community sample of 992 Portuguese women in pre-, peri- and postmenopause completed the proposed inventory with 47 items. Factor exploratory and confirmatory analyses, and comparative statistics for paired and independent samples, were applied using PASW Statistics v.19 and AMOS v.18 software.
The final structure with 38 items organized in 12 factors showed overall good psychometric properties (in terms of factor analysis, convergent, discriminant and criterion validity, as well as regarding reliability, sensitivity, and measure invariance in two different and independent samples). The Wilcoxon test confirmed significant differences between frequency and intensity of symptoms. Moreover, peri- and postmenopausal women in this community sample presented low symptom severity (ranging from 0.4 to 1.4 in a scale from 0 to 4). Although postmenopausal participants presented higher levels (when compared with their perimenopausal counterparts), the two groups only diverged significantly in some physical symptoms (namely, aches and pain, vasomotor symptoms, numbness, skin and facial hair changes, urinary and sexual symptoms).
This research emphasizes that severity measurement of symptoms should account for both frequency and intensity. Moreover, it contributes a fully validated 12-dimension inventory for menopausal symptoms, the Menopause Symptoms' Severity Inventory-38. Regarding differences between peri- and postmenopausal women, the increment in symptoms only happens in physical symptoms, although the severity levels are not exacerbated.
绝经期量表通常评估症状的频率或强度。本研究开发并验证了一种通过测量频率和强度来评估绝经期症状严重程度的量表，并探讨了不同绝经状态女性之间的差异。
一项针对葡萄牙社区的 992 名绝经前、围绝经期和绝经后妇女的研究，完成了包含 47 个项目的拟议量表。采用 PASW Statistics v.19 和 AMOS v.18 软件进行探索性和验证性因子分析以及配对和独立样本的比较统计学分析。
最终的 38 个项目结构分为 12 个因子，具有较好的心理测量学特性（在因子分析、收敛、判别和标准效度方面，以及在两个不同和独立的样本中的可靠性、敏感性和测量不变性方面）。Wilcoxon 检验证实了症状频率和强度之间存在显著差异。此外，该社区样本中的围绝经期和绝经后妇女的症状严重程度较低（在 0 到 4 的量表上，范围从 0.4 到 1.4）。尽管绝经后参与者的水平较高（与围绝经期相比），但这两个组仅在一些躯体症状（即疼痛、血管舒缩症状、麻木、皮肤和面部毛发变化、尿和性功能障碍）上存在显著差异。
本研究强调，症状严重程度的测量应同时考虑频率和强度。此外，它还提供了一个经过充分验证的 12 维度绝经症状量表——绝经症状严重程度量表-38。关于围绝经期和绝经后妇女之间的差异，只有在躯体症状上才会出现症状的增加，尽管严重程度没有恶化。
