The development of the menstrual symptom questionnaire

The literature has suggested that there are two separate types of primary dysmenorrhea with different physiological bases and different reported symptomatology. The purpose of this study was to construct a questionnaire based on suggestions from Dalton's (1969) theory of congestive and spasmodic types of primary dysmenorrhea, to obtain test-retest reliabilities of items, and to factor analyze the instrument to empirically investigate the two-type theory. The first set of 51 items had mean test-retest reliabilities of 0.76 and yielded two clearly distinct factors in support of the two-type hypothesis. When items with factor loadings less than ±0.35 were discarded, 25 items remained. The mean test-retest reliabilities of these items was 0.78. Again, two clearly distinct factors emerged defining congestive and spasmodic dysmenorrhea consistent with the literature. The retained items from the first questionnaire and the items from the second questionnaire loaded on the same factors both times. It was concluded that two types of dysmenorrhea do, in fact, exist and that this study has provided a reliable means of differentiating them. From a therapeutic standpoint, accurate diagnosis of type may be a prerequisite for prescribing appropriate treatment.