The Stress of the Infertile Women

불임여성의 불임스트레스 정도에 관한 연구

This study was designed and carried out to describe the stress of the infertile women and identify its predictors. The subjects of this study, 131 infertile women, were in primary or secondary infertility. the were conveniently sampled out from the infertility clinics of K University Medical Center and C Hospital in Seoul. The data were collected by using the Infertility Stress Scale which consisted of 35 items with four dimensions(cognitive, affective, marital and social stress) from August to November 1994. The data were analyzed by using the pc-SAS program. The information was obtained of Mean, Standard Deviation, Frequencies, Percentile, t-test, ANOVA, Duncan's multiple comparison test and Multiple Regression. The results are as follows; 1. The Mean of the stress of the infertile women is 2.78. The Means of the stress in 4 dimensions are 3.81 in the cognitive dimension, 3.05 in the affective dimension, 2.06 in the marital adjustment dimension and 2.41 in the social adjustment dimension. 2. The predictors of the stress of the infertile women are their educational levels and subjective economic status. They explain 14.08% of total variance.