Canadian menopause study-I: Understanding women's intentions to utilise hormone replacement therapy

Objectives: This research examines women's intentions to use or to continue to use HRT, as a function of perceived advantages and disadvantages of HRT and perceived social support for utilising HRT. Methods: A cross-national sample of 205 pre-, peri-, and postmenopausal women convened in 33 'Women's Health Discussion Groups' in small, mid-sized, and large cities across the regions of Canada. Participants completed close-ended questionnaires assessing perceptions of advantages, disadvantages, and social support for HRT, and intentions to utilise or to continue to utilise HRT in the future. Results: Women who intended to utilise or to continue to utilise HRT, compared with women who did not, perceived significantly more advantages of HRT and significantly more social support for utilising HRT, and did not, in general, differ in their perceptions of the negative side effects of HRT. Regression analysis indicated that perceived advantages of HRT and perceived social support for using HRT, but not perceived negative side effects of HRT, were significantly associated with intentions to utilise or to continue to utilise therapy and explained 46% of the variance in these intentions. Conclusions: Findings suggest that the importance of perceived health benefits of HRT and perceived social support for HRT may be substantially underestimated, and that the importance of perceived negative side effects of HRT may be substantially overestimated, in understanding women's HRT decision making and in counselling women about initiation or maintenance of therapy. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.