"So mean and cranky, I could bite my mother": an ethnosemantic analysis of women's descriptions of premenstrual change.

Textual analysis was used to examine responses to an open ended question about women's experiences of premenstrual change. The question was the final item of the Premenstrual Assessment Form (PAF), a retrospective PMS questionnaire. Of the 336 women who answered the PAF, 261 provided a written narrative summary. We found a logical hierarchy of distinctions covering the presence or absence of changes, their timing, and attributive aspects, and a final cumulative distinction in which women provided information about the consequences of their premenstrual change. Although attribute aspects mirrored the PAF, distinctions in timing and in the cumulative effect of changes differed. The analysis suggests that questionnaires could be designed which more precisely reflect premenstrual change.