The Perimenopausal Fatigue Self-Management Scale Is Suitable for Evaluating Perimenopausal Taiwanese Women's Vulnerability to Fatigue Syndrome

Hsiao-Hui Chiu; Lee-Ing Tsao; Chieh-Yu Liu; Yu-Ying Lu; Whei-Mei Shih; Peng-Hui Wang

doi:10.3390/healthcare9030336

The Perimenopausal Fatigue Self-Management Scale Is Suitable for Evaluating Perimenopausal Taiwanese Women's Vulnerability to Fatigue Syndrome

Healthcare (Basel). 2021 Mar 16;9(3):336. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9030336.

Authors

Hsiao-Hui Chiu^{1

2}, Lee-Ing Tsao², Chieh-Yu Liu², Yu-Ying Lu², Whei-Mei Shih³, Peng-Hui Wang^{4

5

6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nursing, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
² Graduate Institute of Gerontology and Heath Care Management, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
³ Graduate Institute of Gerontology and Heath Care Management, Chang Gung University of Science and Technology, Taoyuan City 333, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
⁵ Institute of Clinical Medicine, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei 112, Taiwan.
⁶ Department of Medical Research, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung 404, Taiwan.
⁷ Female Cancer Foundation, Taipei 112, Taiwan.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of utilizing the established perimenopausal fatigue self-management scale (P-MFSMS) to evaluate perimenopausal Taiwanese women's vulnerability to fatigue syndrome. A cross-sectional study design was adopted to survey 220 perimenopausal Taiwanese women with a mean age of 51.8 ± 4.64 years and a mean body mass index of 23.07 ± 3.04 kg/m², 75.9% of whom were married, 52.3% had a college education or above, 80.4% had salaries, 81.3% had small families, and 96.4% were not using hormone therapy. The P-MFSMS consists of 25 questions based on six categories: (1) strive to maintain work energy and efficiency; (2) seek self-help from medical resources (doctor shopping); (3) strive to maintain the normal operation of the family (seeking help and support from family or significant other); (4) make time for activities or exercise in busy life; (5) slow down or adjust lifestyle; (6) frustration. For all of these six categories, the minimum loading of each question on the factor was calculated to be over 0.50, with a Cronbach's α of 0.78 and a corrected total-item correlation of >0.50. The goodness of fit of the model was determined to be acceptable, with a chi-square/df value of <3.0 (χ² = 503.45 and df = 260), a root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) value of 0.065 (<0.08), as well as a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value of 0.892. The Tucker-Lewis index (TLI = 0.91), Comparative Fit index (CFI = 0.92), and Incremental Fit index (IFI = 0.92) were all >0.90. There was no statistically significant difference in the difficulty between perimenopausal and postmenopausal women utilizing differential item function (DIF) analysis. Taken together, the 25-question P-MFSMS may be a potentially valid and reliable instrument for suitably evaluating perimenopausal Taiwanese women's vulnerability to fatigue syndrome. Future studies will be conducted to test the effectiveness of the P-MFSMS for evaluating perimenopausal Taiwanese women's vulnerability to fatigue syndrome in clinical practice.

Keywords: confirmatory factor analysis; fatigue; menopause; postmenopausal; self-management scale.