[Reproducibility of a questionnaire for studying climacteric].
OBJECTIVE
This study evaluated the reproducibility of a questionnaire concerned with the clinical and epidemiological aspects of menopause.


METHODS
The study population consisted of a hundred perimenopausal Mexican women seeking care at gynecology and obstetric health care services. Their participation was voluntary and they answered the same questionnaire two times with a 15-30 day lag between each application.


RESULTS
The Kappa coefficient was high (0.81-1.0) for categorical variables such as: type of menstrual cycles, type of menopause, breast-feeding, use of estrogen during menopause and use of hormonal contraceptives. The Kappa coefficient was moderate (0.7-0.8) for symptoms related to menopause such as hot flashes, sweating, painful coitus, vaginal dryness and a decrease in libido. Mean differences were calculated for continuous variables such as age at menarche, age at menopause, time using estrogen and the duration of breast-feeding, the majority had a value of zero and 95% confidence intervals for these mean differences included the null value. The questionnaire also included other characteristics such as tobacco consumption and a short food frequency questionnaire, which showed high concordance (Kappa 0.7-1.0).


CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study show that this questionnaire has a high level of reproducibility and can be useful as a research tool to explore menopause in Mexican women.
Vázquez-Benítez
E
E
Asociación Mexicana para el Estudio del Climaterio A.C. México, D.F.
Garrido-Latorre
F
F
MacGregor
C
C
Tamayo-Orozco
J
J
López-Carrillo
L
L
Parra
S
S
Santibañez-Moreno
G
G
D002979:Climacteric; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
Reproducibilidad de un cuestionario para el estudio del climaterio.