This was a longitudinal study, taking place across 4 years and looking into women who are entering the transitional phase between menstruation and menopause. They predicted that: history of depression would be the strongest predictor of perimenopausal depression and hormonal fluctuation, particularly estrogen, would be associated with depressive symptoms. Both of these hypotheses were supported.

This study also addressed race: the races of the participants were noted and numbered in the paper. After controlling for a variety of variables, black women were still two times as likely as white women to report depressive symptoms. This can be due to psychosocial factors which strongly affect and are affected by race.