PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING, SELF-CONCEPT, AND MARITAL SATISFACTION AMONG PRE-, PERI-, AND POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMEN

Abstract

Present study was undertaken to investigate the phenomenon of menopause and its impact on women’s psychological well-being, self-concept and marital satisfaction. This study was divided in four phases. Focus groups were conducted in Phase I to get baseline information from Pakistani women in their menopausal stages (pre, peri and post) about menopausal symptoms and other selected variables. Information was collected from working and non-working women. The collected information laid the foundation for the formulation of hypotheses as previous researches had diverse findings. Four instruments were selected to measure menopausal symptoms and other variables. The Ryff Scale of Psychological Well-Being (Ryff, 1989), translated into Urdu by Ansari (2010), and ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale (Olson, 1989) translated into Urdu by Iqbal (2010) were used to measure psychological well-being and marital satisfaction. Whereas Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, (TSCS-2) (Fitts & Warren, 2003) and Green Climacteric Symptoms Scale- GCSC (Greene, 1998) were translated in Phase II of the present study. The test-retest reliability of the TSCS-2 and GCSC were found to be satisfactory. Pilot study was conducted in Phase III on sample (N=60) to evaluate psychometric properties of the instruments and preliminary analysis was also conducted. Results of pilot study gave satisfactory psychometric properties of instruments and other analysis paved the way for main study. Premenopausal women (n=116), Perimenopausal women (n=116), and Postmenopausal women (n=116) were selected for main study and the collected data was statistically analyzed. Results revealed acceptable range of item-total and inter-scale correlation coefficients and satisfactory reliability coefficients of the instruments. Results revealed that perimenopausal women experienced more menopausal symptoms than pre and postmenopausal women. Post-hoc differences revealed that women from perimenopausal and postmenopausal groups had low level psychological well-being, relatively negative self-concept, and low level of marital satisfaction as compared to women from premenopausal group. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated significant predictive relationship of peri-menopausal symptoms and self-concept. Mediation analyses were conducted and results revealed that marital satisfaction and psychological well-being are mediating the relationship between self-concept and menopausal symptoms. Analysis of demographic variables indicated that working women experienced fewer menopausal symptoms than non-working women. The perimenopausal women with lower level of education experienced more menopausal symptoms as compared to women from other two groups. Perimenopausal women belonging to lower income families have high mean scores than other two income groups. The implications based on the findings for health care as well as further research have been discussed.