Psychometric Properties of the Attitude toward Menopause Checklist-Persian Version: A Comparison between Girls’ and their Menopause Mothers’ Attitudes

Background: The current study was conducted to examine the psychometric properties, including internal consistency, content validity, construct validity of the scale through which the attitude of girls and menopause women were compared.Methods: This is a psychometric study on ۳۵۰ healthy postmenopausal Iranian women referred to healthcare centers in Semnan and Mashhad cities. The study is conducted in two phases: revalidating the scale of Attitude toward Menopause (ATM) in the Iranian context and then comparing the attitudes of girls and menopause women. Due to the special circumstances caused by the Corona crisis and the lack of direct access to girls, as well as the limited research time, a number of ATM questionnaires were completed online and some in person by ۲۰۰ postmenopausal women and ۲۰۰ adolescent girls.Results: Mean age of subjects were ۵۵.۴۵±۵.۵۸ years. Cronbach's alpha was ۰.۶۸% and original modified model was reported to be unidentified. Therefore, the exploratory factor analysis was performed through principal-component analysis with varimax rotation. Given the results of scree plot, eigenvalues and the interpretability of the different factor solutions, five factors were identified as the most appropriate predictors of attitude toward menopause. These five factors explained ۴۸% of variance. In the second phase of the study, ۲۰۰ postmenopausal women and ۲۰۰ girls participated. The mean score of attitude of postmenopausal women was ۴۵.۶۷ ۶۶ ۵.۶۶ and the mean score of attitude of girls was ۴۸.۷۵ ۷۴ ۵.۷۴; and the difference between the mean scores was found to be statistically significant (۰۰ ۰.۰۰۱). The correlation coefficient between age and attitude score was equal to (r = -۰.۲۲۸, P˂۰.۰۰۱). In other words, for each year of increasing the age of the participants, their attitude score was reduced by ۰.۲۲۸ and this decrease was significant.Conclusions: Our findings revealed that attitude toward menopause Checklist (ATM) should be modified in accordance with Iranian culture to predispose for feasible assessment of attitudes towards menopause. Further investigations are needed to evaluate all of the psychometric properties of this scale. The findings of the second part of the study showed that the attitude of adolescent girls is significantly more positive than postmenopausal women.

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Keyword: Psychometric properties , attitude toward menopause , Girl , Menopause