Bih-Ching Shu¹, PhD; Wei-Ming Luh², PhD 1.        Professor & Director, Department of Nursing, and Institute of Allied Health Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.
2.  Professor & Director, Institute of Educatuion, College of Social Science, National Cheng Kung University
Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the self-concept of community women during their mid-life stage and its related to menopause symptoms in Southern Taiwan. Women with 45 to 55 years old were eligible. A clustering random sampling process was used in recruiting potential participants resizing in one of seven districts in Tainan city. The northern district was first chosen and three areas there out of 43 areas were randomly chosen. Then a name list of women aged 45- 55 was obtained by the Household Registrar Office and a total of 401 women were recruited. Two hundred eighty (69.83%) women agreed to participate and all participants were given informed consent. In final, there were 266 valid questionnaires. Tennessee Self-Concept Scale and Greene Climacteric Symptom Scale, both in Chinese version, were administered. Descriptive statistics on each outcome measure were calculated. Two stepwise regression analyses were conducted to find the predictors of the psychological and physiological symptoms. The result showed that the physical self is the most important predictors for both the psychological and physiological symptoms. The findings suggest that the self-concept is an important variable and needed to be considered for intervention.

Keywords: self-concept, midlife, menopause, community women

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