Purpose: The study aim was to translate the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS) to Serbian language and assess its validity and reliability in the population of Serbian menopausal women.
Methods: The study included 200 peri- and postmenopausal women from two Community Health Centers (city center and outskirts) in the Serbian capital-Belgrade. Women filled out general questionnaire (socio-demographics, habits, medical history), the MRS, Short Form-36 questionnaire (SF-36) and Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI). The MRS was translated according to recommended methodology and its psychometric properties (internal consistency, factor analysis, discriminant, construct and criterion validity) were assessed.
Results: The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole scale was 0.884 (psychological α = 0.902, somato-vegetative α = 0.761, urogenital α = 0.734). Values of the CI-TC coefficient for Serbian MRS were adequate for 10 items, proving their suitability in the scale. On factor analysis, we obtained the same 3 factors as in the original scale (73.1 % of variance). Communalities of all items were appropriate (>0.4). There was no common method bias. The MRS total score was correlated positively with BDI score (p = 0.001) and negatively with all SF-36 domains (p = 0.001) except General Health. Based on ROC analysis, MRS scores were more consistent for post- than perimenopausal Serbian women. Similar results of two raters (p > 0.05) implied on adequate translation and reliability of MRS.
Conclusion: Serbian version of MRS demonstrated excellent reliability and validity. The MRS in Serbian language can be used in daily clinical work with menopausal women for assessing their symptoms and quality of life.
Keywords: Menopause; Menopause Rating Scale; Scale validation; Serbia.