title: Menopause-specific quality of life of urban women in West Bengal, India.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To find out the association of menopause-specific quality of life of women with both working status and duration of postmenopausal years.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a cross-sectional study on 250 postmenopausal women belonging to Bengali-speaking Hindu ethnic group, aged 47-62 years in the city of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The participants were literate, living in wedlock with at least one surviving child, attained natural menopause at least two years ago and have never taken hormone replacement treatment. Menopause-specific quality of life was measured using a self-administered standard questionnaire (Menopause-Specific Quality of Life questionnaire, or MENQOL). MENQOL consisted of 29 menopausal symptoms (items) that are grouped under four domains. Additional information on sociodemographic aspect and reproductive history of the participants were collected using a pretested questionnaire.  Main outcome measures Both bivariate and multivariate analyses showed that menopause-specific quality of life decreases with the increase in duration of postmenopausal years. Although bivariate analysis demonstrated that working women had a better menopause-specific quality of life than their non-working counterpart, multivariate linear regression model did not corroborate to this finding.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Duration of postmenopausal years had a significant association with menopause-specific quality of life of women.
authors: Biological Anthropology Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. nivsom.som@gmail.com
authors: Nivedita
authors: N
authors: Som
authors: Subha
authors: S
authors: Ray
mesh_terms: D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004651:Employment / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008593:Menopause / Q000208:ethnology / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D017698:Postmenopause / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors; D014505:Urban Population