[Design and validation of a questionnaire in Spanish for measuring the quality of life in postmenopausal women: the MENCAV questionnaire]

Abstract

Objective: To calculate the validity and reliability of a questionnaire to measure the quality of life in post-menopausal women.

Design: Cross-sectional observation study.

Setting: Three health districts in the province of Cuenca.

Participants: 203 menopausal women between 44 and 60 years of age, chosen through simple randomised sampling.

Measurements and main results: On the basis of the analysis of various scales of health-related quality of life, some for measuring physical disorders, and others for psychological disorders, a questionnaire was designed. This had 85 items structured as a Likert-like additive scale and explored four dimensions (physical health, psychological health, family environment and social support). In the view of a multi-disciplinary group of health professionals, it met criteria of logical validity and validity of contents for the different spheres that are usually affected in the menopause. After the administration of the questionnaire to the women taking part, a process of "purging" items began, in which those items with a reply frequency to one of the five options of below 5% or above 95% were discarded. Also discarded were those items for which the inter-item correlation was below 0.20, with analysis too of the behaviour of the Cronbach's alpha coefficient as each item was eliminated from its scale. Finally, through exploratory factorial analysis techniques (main components), the distribution of the items in dimensions was evaluated. A final questionnaire made up of 37 items in 5 dimensions, which we named physical health, psychological health, family environment, sexual relationships and social support was reached. This questionnaire had an overall Cronbach's alpha value of 0.84. Finally, the correlations existing between the sum of scores of the items on each of the dimensions were analysed. The correlation coefficients showed values between 0.08 and 0.69.

Conclusions: The MENCAV questionnaire is the first in Spanish which assesses quality of life in menopausal women. Experts analysed its logical validity and contents validity and found it had a high degree of internal consistency.