Menopause : women's knowledge sources and management decisions : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Nursing at Massey University
type: CreativeWork
description: During the last two decades the topic of menopause has become more openly discussed as evidenced by the prevalence of items in the popular press as well as research done by health professionals. The information that is published in the popular press is largely orientated towards menopause being a disease and the pharmaceutical interventions needed to correct the disease. Literature published in medical and nursing journals is also predominantly orientated toward menopause being a state of oestrogen deficiency. Increasingly though, nurse researchers and feminist writers are challenging these views of menopause. However, information about menopause is not as openly available as women want it to be. The aim of this research is to discover how women gain knowledge about menopause and how women make decisions about 'managing' their menopause. In this study knowledge is defined as being more than information. Knowledge is the understanding that occurs from the synthesis of all data, about menopause, collected from various sources. It is from the responses of the participants when they are interviewed, and the data analysis using grounded theory that these questions were answered. The population for the study was women aged between 45-55 years of age. They were recruited from my local community via a newspaper advertisement. The sample group included eleven women. The methodology used in this research was Grounded Theory as developed by Glaser and Strauss. Ethical approval was gained from the Massey University Ethics Committee and the Central Health Regional Authority as well as from the participants. The participants were all interviewed once, with two participants being consulted for comment on the findings. The interviews were taped and transcribed. Data collection and analysis occurred concurrently as prescribed by grounded theory. Categories were generated from the data. A descriptive model is presented. This model illustrates that women who have a tertiary level of k…
abstract: During the last two decades the topic of menopause has become more openly discussed as evidenced by the prevalence of items in the popular press as well as research done by health professionals. The information that is published in the popular press is largely orientated towards menopause being a disease and the pharmaceutical interventions needed to correct the disease. Literature published in medical and nursing journals is also predominantly orientated toward menopause being a state of oestrogen deficiency. Increasingly though, nurse researchers and feminist writers are challenging these views of menopause. However, information about menopause is not as openly available as women want it to be. The aim of this research is to discover how women gain knowledge about menopause and how women make decisions about 'managing' their menopause. In this study knowledge is defined as being more than information. Knowledge is the understanding that occurs from the synthesis of all data, about menopause, collected from various sources. It is from the responses of the participants when they are interviewed, and the data analysis using grounded theory that these questions were answered. The population for the study was women aged between 45-55 years of age. They were recruited from my local community via a newspaper advertisement. The sample group included eleven women. The methodology used in this research was Grounded Theory as developed by Glaser and Strauss. Ethical approval was gained from the Massey University Ethics Committee and the Central Health Regional Authority as well as from the participants. The participants were all interviewed once, with two participants being consulted for comment on the findings. The interviews were taped and transcribed. Data collection and analysis occurred concurrently as prescribed by grounded theory. Categories were generated from the data. A descriptive model is presented. This model illustrates that women who have a tertiary level of k…
author: Turia, Desley Patricia
keywords: Menopause, Middle-aged women
date published: 1998
date modified: 2026-07-27T20:17:42Z
provider: Massey University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Massey University