Effect of education on middle-aged women's knowledge and attitude towards menopause in Mashhad

Menopause is not avoidable and will occur in every woman's life. Understanding its risk factors and their prevention is necessary for every woman. This important measure will be possible through health care education and the first step in every education is knowledge and analysis of subject's awareness and attitude. The purpose of this research was to find out the effect of education on middle-aged women’s knowledge and attitude towards menopause. In this quasi-experimental study, 90 women aged between 40 and 60 years were randomly selected based on purposive sampling. Then, the effect of education on their knowledge and attitude was evaluated. Before implementing the education program, primary information about women’s Knowledge and attitude was collected through questionnaires. After study the obtained data and need- assessment of the subjects, an appropriate education program was planned. Then, in two one-hour sessions individual face to face education was offered to all subjects. Three months later, information was collected through the original questionnaires again. Student-t, one-way variance analysis, and paired t tests were used for data analysis. The results of this research showed that post-education mean knowledge was significantly different from that of pre-education (P=0.000). Before education, 43.3% of the subjects had poor knowledge, 42.3% had moderate and only 14.4% had good knowledge. However, after education none of the women had poor knowledge, 31.1% had moderate and 68.9% had good knowledge. Attitude also significantly varied after education (P=0.000). Before education, 10% of women had negative attitude, 66.7% had neutral attitude, and 23.3% had positive attitude towards menopause however, none of the women had negative attitude after the education, 53.3% of the subjects had a neutral, and 46.7% had a positive attitude. The study showed that the reasonable way to increase people's knowledge is based on health education. Through such education, it is possible to equip individuals with enough knowledge to take care of their health.