[Study on the reliability and validity of the Chinese Menopause Rating Scale (CMRS)].

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility, reliability, validity and responsiveness of a Chinese Menopause Rating Scale (CMRS).

Methods: Cross-sectional survey and convenience sampling were adopted.

Participants: women with menopause syndrome and those in menopause but without menopause syndrome were recruited. All participants were asked to complete the CMRS, Kupperman Index, WHOQOL-BREF and MENQOL. The Self-control observation design was adopted when the responsiveness was evaluated. Patients were treated with TCM for weeks. MRSTCM was evaluated before and after the treatment.

Results: (1) Feasibility: 3343 participants including 2320 patients and 1023 menopause women, were surveyed in 8 different settings. The recovery rate of CMRS was 100%, with a response rate as 99.7%. The completion of the CMRS took 10.30 minutes on average. (2)Reliability: Cronbach's alpha of CMRS, soma dimension, psychology dimension and community dimension of CMRS were 0.93, 0.87, 0.89 and 0.73 respectively, with the correlation coefficient of split half of the CMRS. Soma dimension, psychology dimension and community dimension were 0.92, 0.89, 0.86 and 0.73 respectively and the test-retest correlation coefficient of MRSTCM, the soma dimension, psychology dimension and community dimension were as 0.88, 0.91, 0.85 and 0.77 respectively. (3) VALIDITY: CMRS was established on the basis of connotation of menopause syndrome, and a series of steps were adopted to modify the scale. CMRS was applicable for patients with menopause syndrome. CMRS seemed to have had good content-related validity. The result of exploratory factor analysis was accorded with the theory frame of CMRS by and large. The correlations between CMRS and KI, CMRS and WHOQOL-BREF, CMRS and MENQOL seemed good. The CMRS was able to discriminate between groups of people with or without menopausal syndrome and had good discriminative validity. (4) Responsibility: The CMRS was measured based on 174 patients with menopausal syndrome before and after the TCM therapy. Our result showed that the CMRS having the ability to measure the clinically important differences.

Conclusion: CMRS was suitable for outcome assessment of menopausal syndrome. This primary research proved that the CMRS had good feasibility, reliability, validity as well as responsiveness.