Designing and standardization of a questionnaire to evaluate the quality of life of women on the threshold of menopause

Abstract

Introduction: The quality of life of menopausal women is always an important health issue. Questionnaires available in Iran to assess the quality of life of menopausal women are short-translated questionnaires that often only measure the frequency and severity of menopausal symptoms and doesn’t include all dimensions affecting the quality of life in this time period. Therefore, the present study was conducted with aim to design and standardize a questionnaire to evaluate the quality of life of women on the threshold of menopause. Methods: The Persian version of the questionnaire was developed by forward–backward translation process and was evaluated on 370 women aged 47 to 60 years who were randomly selected from women covered by Shahinshahr (Isfahan) health centers. The impact score index was used to evaluate the face validity, the content validity index and content validity ratio were used to evaluate the content validity, the methods of correlation of convergence validity and discriminant validity and exploratory factor analysis were used to evaluate the construct validity, and Cronbach’s alpha and intra-class-correlation (ICC) were used to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire and reliability coefficient index. Results: The final questionnaire consists of 43 questions in 4 scales (psychological, sexual, physical, sychosomatic). The results show that each of the psychological, sexual, physical and psychosomatic dimensions had Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.862, 0.805, 0.669, 0.728 and in total 0.879, respectively and the intra-class-correlation obtained 0.875, 0.899, 0.841, 0.908 and in total 0.824. The face validity, content validity and structural validity were confirmed. Conclusion: The present study provides a scientific, valid and reliable tool in Persian language to assess the quality of life of women at the threshold of menopause. Using this questionnaire to evaluate the quality of life these women can be an effective step towards its improvement.

Keywords

• menopausal women
• quality of life
• validation
• validity and reliability