den Tonkelaar I
Julius Center for Patient Oriented Research, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Maturitas. 1997 Jun;27(2):117-23. doi: 10.1016/s0378-5122(97)01122-5.
To study validity and reproducibility of self reported age at menopause.
Subjects were 1003 and 4892 Dutch women respectively aged 58-73, who participated in a population-based breast cancer screening project. The median time since menopause was 7 years for the validity study. The time span between the two questionnaires in the reproducibility study was 7-9 years.
Of the women with a natural menopause, 70% recalled their age at menopause correctly to within one year. For women with a surgical menopause this percentage was 80%. The validity decreased with increasing number of years since menopause. Reproducibility to within one year was 71% for women with a natural menopause and 79% for women with a surgical menopause; 95% of the women were consistent in reporting whether they had had a natural or a surgical menopause.
As a consequence of this misclassification, the effect of age at menopause may be underestimated in studies relating self reported age at menopause to disease occurrence or mortality.
研究自我报告的绝经年龄的有效性和可重复性。
受试者分别为1003名和4892名年龄在58 - 73岁之间的荷兰女性，她们参与了一项基于人群的乳腺癌筛查项目。在有效性研究中，绝经后的中位时间为7年。在可重复性研究中，两份问卷之间的时间间隔为7 - 9年。
自然绝经的女性中，70%能正确回忆起绝经年龄在1年之内。手术绝经的女性这一比例为80%。有效性随绝经后年限的增加而降低。自然绝经女性1年内的可重复性为71%，手术绝经女性为79%；95%的女性在报告自己是自然绝经还是手术绝经方面保持一致。
由于这种错误分类，在将自我报告的绝经年龄与疾病发生或死亡率相关的研究中，绝经年龄的影响可能被低估。
