Women's health: do common symptoms in women mirror general distress or specific disease entities?

The purpose of this study was to determine aspects of validity of a short s elf-report inventory, based on physical and psychological symptoms that, ac cording to other studies, are most prevalent in women. It was hypothesized that such symptoms form a single entity, which would be consistent with the view that they represent a proxy for general distress in women. Method: On e hundred and one women were approached, all of whom filled in the "common symptoms in the general population of women" (CSGP) instrument and the mult idimensional self-report inventory Symptom Check List 90 (SCL90) for extern al comparison. The results indicate that the CSGP scale has high internal c onsistency (alpha = 0.80). The strongest correlations were found between th e CSGP scale and the SCL90 subscales assessing "somatization", "depression" and "anxiety". In the factor analysis, the items on the CSGP scale were wi dely dispersed among the factors represented by the main SCL90 subscales, a nd therefore could not be considered to represent any particular subscale. Our conclusion is that the CSGP scale seems to assess a single entity. Othe r researchers suggest that such an entity represent a proxy for general dis tress in women. This will have implications for the interpretation of the c ommon symptoms represented by the scale, which women report in clinical set tings.