• C B Johannes, S L Crawford, J Woods, R B Goldstein, D Tran, S Mehrotra, K B Johnson, and N Santoro.
• New England Research Institutes, Watertown, Massachusetts 02472, USA.
• Menopause. 2000 May 1; 7 (3): 200-8.

ObjectivesThis pilot study compared a prototype electronic menstrual calendar on a handheld computer with a paper calendar for data quality and participants' perceptions.DesignTwenty-three women completed identical information about menstrual bleeding and symptoms using paper and electronic calendars for 1 month each.ResultsUse of the paper calendar resulted in more missing data than the electronic calendar for bleeding characteristics (13% vs. 4%) and symptoms (35% vs. 4%). The electronic calendar's ability to log data entries revealed retrospective entry for 61% of the data. Total data entry and cleaning time was reduced by 81% with the electronic calendar. Overall, participants preferred the electronic (70%) to the paper (22%) calendar.ConclusionsData quality with conventional paper calendars may be poorer than recognized. The data-logging feature, unique to the electronic calendar, is critical for assessing data quality. Electronic menstrual calendars can be useful data collection tools for research in women's health.

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