Toward delineating menstrual symptom groupings: Examination of factor analytic results of menstrual symptom instruments

The present study objectives were three. First, the factor structure of Chesney and Tasto’s Menstrual Symptom Questionnaire (MSQ) was reexamined to determine whether Chesney and Tasto’s (1975a) two‐factor or Webster’s (1980) and Stephenson, Denney, and Aberger’s (1983) multifactor result could be replicated. Second, the internal‐consistency reliability of the MSQ in the present study was determined. Third, known and suspected menstrual symptom report confounders were deleted from the analysis to determine whether or not exclusion of menstrual symptom confounders results in a factor structure which differs significantly from samples which include known symptom confounders. A “Heterogeneous”; sample (n = 330), similar to samples used in previous studies, and a more “homogeneous”; sample (n = 230), which deleted menstrual symptom confounders, were utilized in the MSQ factor analysis replication. Six factors resulted from both samples: premenstrual negative affect, menstrual pain, premenstrual pain, gastro‐intestinal/prostaglandin, water retention, and asymptomatic. Cronbach’s alpha internal‐consistency reliability was determined to be .89 in the heterogeneous sample and .90 in the homogeneous sample. It was concluded that these results 1) supported the existence of multiple menstrual syndromes and 2) supported the high internal consistency reliability of the MSQ, and 3) indicated the robustness of the factor analytic structure of MSQ’s menstrual symptoms to the inclusion of known menstrual symptom confounders.