Comparison of the Effect of In-person and Virtual Group Training on the Quality of Life of Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

Abstract

Background and Objective: The present study aimed to compare the effect of in-person and virtual group training on the quality of life of postmenopausal women. Materials and Methods: This randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted on 96 postmenopausal females covered by the health service centers of Isfahan city, Iran in 2021-2022. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups of in-person and virtual training (48 participants in each group). The data collection tools included questionnaires of demographic characteristics and quality of life of postmenopausal females. Both in-person and virtual training sessions were held by the researcher in weekly groups for 4 weeks. Data were collected before the intervention and 4weeks after the intervention and analyzed in SPSS software (version 19) with the help of descriptive and analytical tests. A significance level of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: After the intervention, the mean scores of the total menopausal quality of life in the virtual and in-person education groups were 72.04±32.29 and 73.02±27.46, respectively. In both groups, a statistically significant decrease was observed, compared to the baseline (P<0.001). The mean scores of other domains of quality of life in both groups underwent a statistically significant decrease, compared to the baseline (P<0.001). The mean scores of quality of life of the two groups did not show a statistically significant difference after the intervention (P>0.05). Conclusion: Given the positive effect of both in-person and virtual training on the improvement of the quality of life of menopausal females, the use of both types of training methods can be suggested in care and support programs for women during menopause. Copyright © 2023 Avicenna Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Care. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cite.