Relationships between infertility-related stress, coping, and quality of life in women undergoing infertility treatments

The objectives of the proposed research are to examine the relationships between psychological and biological measures of infertility-related stress, coping, and quality of life in women undergoing infertility treatments. Subject Population: Women between 18-50 years of age with infertility undergoing infertility treatments Research Design: Descriptive correlational cross-sectional research design Instrument: Hair cortisol concentrations, Copenhagen Multi-centre Psychosocial Infertility Fertility Problem Scale Score (COMPI-FPSS), Copenhagen Multi-centre Psychosocial Infertility Coping Styles Scale (COMPI-CSS), and the Fertility Quality of Life (FertiQoL). Procedure: Women will be recruited through infertility groups or pages on Facebook. A Facebook study page embedded with the survey link will be shared with administrators of infertility groups or pages to share to their respective pages. Survey participants who consent to submitting a hair sample for cortisol analysis will be mailed a collection kit, collect the sample using study protocol instructions, and will return the sample in a postage paid envelope to the researcher. Hair samples will be mailed to an independent lab for analysis. Data will be analyzed using SPSS 24 with descriptive statistics, correlations, independent t tests, and MANOVA with eta squared to examine the relationships between cortisol, stress, coping, quality of life, and demographic characteristics.

Scholars @ ECU