Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the scales used in medicine and nursing studies related to menstruation in Japan and overseas, and to obtain indications for the development of a scale for menstrual abnormalities.
For our search of overseas papers, we used CINAHL with Full Text and combined searches of “Menstruation” with “female”, “Factor Analysis”, “Adolescent”, “Scale” and “Premenstrual tool”, from which we chose 6 papers out of 67 results. For papers from Japan, we used Ichushi’s web version, and combined searches of “menstruation” with “scale” and “factor analysis”, from which we obtained 12 pieces of papers from 20 results. We covered a total of 18 papers (12 domestic and 6 overseas) for our study.
We found scales for issues such as menstrual symptoms and menstrual pain, behavior during menstruation, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) diagnosis, menstrual self-care, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD); however, we were not able to find any scales for abnormal menstruation.
Since we could not find a scale specializing in menstrual abnormalities, we determined that there is a need to develop one to help encourage women who have abnormal menstruation but have not had a medical examination to make the choice to visit a medical institution.
