Cross-sectional Study
Approval for the study was given by the Human Resesarch Ethics Committee of the Universtiy of Melbourne.
The initial study was a cross-sectional telephone survey of a randomly selected community-based sample of 2001 women in the general population. The women were Australian-born, aged between 45 and 55 years of age and representative of the general community of women in age and were similar in sociodemographic characteristics and health behaviours.
Telephone numbers were selected with the help of the Roy Morgan Research Centre Pty. Ltd. by means of computerised random number selection database of the Melbourne White pages. Each number was called up to 5 times. After an explanation of the study, women who were eligible were invited to complete a 20-25 minute interview conducted by trained interviewers of the Roy Morgan research Centre in Melbourne. Telephone interviews for this part of the study were undertaken between 11th April to 19th May 1991. There was a response rate of 71%.
The Melbourne Women's Midlife Health Project research team were given access to the core questionnaire carefully constructed by Kaufert and McKinlay in a study of 2500 Manitoba women (Kaufert P, 1984) and in a study of 8050 Massachussets women (Kaufert P, 1984; McKinlay and McKinaly, 1984; Avis and McKinlay, 1990).
Data was collected on:
- menstrual/menopausal status
- health status; well-being
- sexual functioning
- common symptoms, diagnosed chronic illnesses, other illness
- premenstrual symptoms
- health service use
- hormone therapy
- stress
- attitudes to age and to menopause
- health-related behaviours - smoking status, alcohol consumption, exercise
- healthcare utilisation - screening
- use of medications (both prescription and non-prescription)
- sociodemographic characteristics
Standardised objective definitions of different menopausal status groups were used and women who have had an induced menopause were separated out from those who have had a natural menopause. The definitions used for the cross-sectional study were: premenopause - no changes in menstrual frequency or flow in the prior 12 months; perimenopause - changes in menstrual frequency in the prior 12 months; natural menopause - no menses in the prior 12 months; surgical menopause - hysterectomy and/or bilateral oophorectomy. Women were also asked to rate their own menopausal status.
The list of symptoms used in this project were based on the symptoms checklist described by Kaufert and Syrotuik (1981).
A validated measure of psychological well-being, the [Affectometer 2 (Kammann R, Flett R, 1983)], was used in order to measure both positive and negative moods as well as an overall measure of well-being which was the difference between the positive affect and negative affect scales.
The likelihood of recall and expectancy bias was reduced by presenting the study to women as the "Women's Midlife Health Project" with questions pertaining to menopausal experiences being imbedded in a list of other related symptoms and using a recall period of symptoms to the last 2 weeks (Dennerstein et al, Menopausal symptoms in Australian women. MJA 1993;159:232-236).
A number of papers have been published from the cross-sectional study and can be found in the Publications list.