Determining the reliability and validity of Menopause Symptoms Severity Inventory-38 Questionnaire

Menopause symptoms severity is different in women, and in addition to the effects on aging process, hormonal changes with inducing the symptoms can affect women's quality of life. There are several tools to assess physical and psychological changes during the climacteric period. The MSSI-38 questioner is one of the new tools for simultaneous assessment of the frequency and intensity of symptoms with five-point Likert scale. This study was performed with aim to assess the validity and reliability of MSSI-38 questionnaire. This cross-sectional study was performed on 676 Iranian women who were resident in Mashhad in 2017. The MSSI-38 questioner was translated into Persian and after calcuating CVR, 6 items were eliminated according to the Lawshe formula and 9 factors were extracted by exploratory factor analyses. The content validity was evaluated with Content Validity Ratio (CVR) and Content Validity Index (CVI), and Construct validity was evaluated with Average Variance Extracted (AVE) and Composite Reliability (CR). Data were analyzed with SPSS software (version 16.0) and MPlus and Smart PLS. P< 0.05 was considered statistically significant. The value of AVE=0.562 was favorable. The CVI=0.87 was obtained and the content reliability was confirmed. The Cronbach alpha and CR in most of the factors were acceptable (>0.7). KMO=0.851 indicates the adequacy of the samples. After CFA, the goodness of fit indices were (χ2/df=1.53, RMSEA=0.039, CFI=0.972, TLI=0.968). 7 factors were extracted by using CFA and WLSM and factors construct validity was confirmed. MSSI-38 is a valid and reliable tool for evaluation of Menopause Severity Symptoms and can be used in research articles on Iranian Persian languages population