Validation of a menopause quality of life scale: The MENCAV scale

Factors affecting age of onset of menopause and determination of quality of life in menopause

“…Each of these menopausal quality of life measuring instruments are of different content and they measure different aspects of life during menopause ( 56 ) . Although finding the ideal measuring tool for assessing quality of life is a topic still being explored, existing and accepted instruments in the literature related to menopause and their characteristics are given in Table 2a , 2b , 2c , 2d ( 56 , 57 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 ) .…”

Measurement of Quality of Life in Menopausal Women

“…Known-groups validity showed that only two instruments could differentiate among different menopausal status. In this review, however, change patterns of QoL levels across menopausal status have been reported inconsistently; the MENCAV scores of nonmenopausal women were higher than those of menopausal women (Buendia Bermejo et al, 2008) whereas MQOL scores followed a U-shaped pattern across the menopausal status with the lowest scores achieved in the middle of menopause (Jacobs et al, 2000). In addition, one of the previous studies reported that there was no significant difference in QoL scores comparing the pre- and perimenopausal women after adjusting for other variables (e.g., age, education level, body mass index, chronic illness; Cheng, Lee, Wang, Wang, & Fuh, 2007).…”

“…Seven measures were identified in the 16 papers: Women’s Health Questionnaire (WHQ; Genazzani et al, 2002; Hunter, 1992; Progetto Donna Qualita della Vita Working Group et al, 2002; Wiklund et al, 1992; Wool et al, 2000), Menopause Rating Scale (MRS; Dinger et al, 2006; Heinemann et al, 2004; Schneider, Heinemann, Rosemeier, Potthoff, & Behre, 2000a, 2000b; Schneider, Rosemeier, Schnitker, Gerbsch, & Turck, 2000), Menopause-specific Quality of Life Questionnaire (MENQOL; Chen, Lin, Wei, Gao, & Wu, 2007; Hilditch et al, 1996), Menopausal Quality of Life (MQOL; Jacobs et al, 2000), the MENCAV (Buendia Bermejo et al, 2008), Utian Quality of Life Scale (UQOL; Utian et al, 2002), and MENQOL-Intervention (Lewis, Hilditch, & Wong, 2005). Among them, MENQOL-Intervention is a modified version of the MENQOL to ensure that side effects of specific therapies that might adversely affect QoL were reflected in the outcome measure (Lewis et al, 2005).…”

“…Wiklund (1998) also stated that more symptom-based measures had considerably higher values of responsiveness for treatment-induced change. However, the instrument measuring QoL in menopausal women must be sensitive not only to physical but also to psychological, social, sexual, and partner-related changes (Buendia Bermejo et al, 2008). In addition, it needs to be sensitive in detecting changes because of acute health exacerbations as well as assess changes over the long-term with menopause-related progression (Mishra & Kuh, 2010; Zöllner et al, 2005).…”

“…Fourth, inconsistent use of terminology regarding validity may have influenced the comparison of data on the validity of each measure. For example, correlations of the reviewed QoL instruments and the measures for the same or similar construct were considered as criterion validity in the MENCAV study (Buendia Bermejo et al, 2008), concurrent or clinical validity in the WHQ study (Hunter, 1992; Wool et al, 2000), and external validity in the UQOL study (Utian et al, 2002). In this review, we classified them into convergent validity.…”