الفهرس 
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Abstract
Today, with increasing life expectancy and life span, women spend one third of their lifetime after menopause. Menopause is defined as ”the permanent cessation of menses resulting from reduced ovarian follicular activity ”.The natural menopause is recognized to have occurred after twelve consecutive months of amenorrhea. According to WHO, natural menopause takes place between the ages forty five to fifty five years old and average age of menopause is about fifty one years old.
During menopausal transition, ovarian senescence leads to decline of serum estrogen levels which elicit various somatic, psychological, vasomotor, as well as sexual symptoms. It is known that quality of life is affected negatively by menopausal symptoms. Quality of life is an important outcome measure of health care, and understanding the impact of menopause on quality of life is a critically important part of the care of symptomatic postmenopausal women.
The HBM was one of the first theories developed to explain the process of change in relation to health behavior, when used appropriately; it provides organized assessment data about clients’ abilities and motivation to change their health status.
Therefore Health lies at the heart of the concept of life quality. The health determining factors includes: biological factors like genetic and heredity structures, individual’s behaviors, individual’s responses, ideas and beliefs, social and physical environments, economic conditions and the amount of access to information and health services. So, change in the behavior necessitates change in the beliefs.
The aim of the study
The aim was to explore the relationship between health beliefs and quality of life among menopausal women.
Settings
The study was conducted at non-medical colleges affiliated to University of Alexandria.
Subjects
Convenience sample of menopausal women of administrative staff work at the previously mentioned settings n=300.
Tools
Three tools were used to collect the necessary data.
• Tool one: Menopausal women’s basic data Questionnaire. It entails three main parts: Part I: Socio-demographic characteristics Part II: Menstrual history Part III: Reproductive history
• Tool two: Utian quality of life scale it was developed by Sliva R, Camara S. 2016. This tool was adapted and translated into Arabic by the researcher. It consists of 23 questions designed to measure four domains (a) occupational quality of life, (b) health quality of life, (c) emotional quality of life and (d) sexual quality of life.
• Tool three: Women’s health beliefs regarding their menopause, which is a modification of Elvis E. Tarkang 2015 and Hui-Ting Huang 2016. It was used to assess menopausal women’s health believe through using health belief model .It includes 49 questions concerning its main six variables (Perceived susceptibility, Perceived severity, Perceived benefits, Perceived barriers, Cues to action and Self-efficacy).
The tools were tested for content validity by 5 juries who were expert in the field. A pilot study was carried out on (30) menopausal women who were excluded from the selected participants to ascertain the relevance, clarity and applicability of tools. Data was collected over a period of 3 months starting from the beginning of March 2019 till the end of May 2019. Data was collected through questionnaire sheet given to the women .The number of questionnaire per day was 12 in each faculty .Two days per week .Statistical analysis of results were done after data were done after data were collected it was revised, coded and fed to statistical software IBM SPSS version 20.
The main findings of the present study were:
The basic data
• More than two thirds of the study participants age was 50 or more, also it was observed that the women’s mean age was (50.88 ± 2.23) years.
• More than one half (58.70%) of the study participants had university education.
• All of the study participants (100%) were office workers.
• More than four fifths (82.00%) of the study participants were urban dwellers.
• Nearly three fifths (59.00%) of the study participants had somewhat enough monthly income and more than three quarters (77.30%) of husbands of the study participants were employees.
Reproductive history
• It was observed that (45.30) of the study participants were pregnant for three times and more. Regarding parity, and (45.30%) of the study participants had three or more deliveries.
• When abortion was considered, it was found that the majority (93.30%) of the study participants had no abortion and (44.70%) of the study participants had three or more living children.
Utian quality of life scale
• It was found that more than one half (51.30%) of the study participants had low quality of life, while almost one third (32.00%) of them had moderate quality of life and (16.70%) of them had high quality of life.
Women’s health beliefs regarding their menopause
• Regarding perceived susceptibility, it was reported that nearly one half (49.70%) of the study participants had neutral believe.
• Concerning perceived severity, it was found that nearly one half(47.30%) of the study participants had strong believe.
• In relation to perceived benefits, it was observed that more than three quarters (77.30%) of the study participants had neutral believe.
• Regarding perceived barriers, it was reported that more than two fifths (42.00%) of the study participants had neutral believe.
• Regarding Cues to action, it was found that more than four fifths (82.00%) of the study participants had weak believe.
• Finally to Self-efficacy, it was reported that more than four fifths (83.00%) of the study participants had weak believe.
Relation between overall utian quality of life with women’s health beliefs regarding their menopause:
• Finally, it was found that there was a significant statistical positive correlation between overall utian quality of life and perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy where p≤0.001.
Based on the study findings, the following was recommended
1- Combined effort by educational programs and health care providers will help in increasing women awareness about menopause, its symptoms, impact of symptoms on quality of life, long term consequences and treatment options.
2- Empowerment by increasing menopausal women decision aids abilities to those who need them to improve the perception & self-efficacy concerning this stage.