Premium
ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOUR CORRELATES OF CYTOLOGICAL SCREENING IN WOMEN
Author(s) -
Hill D. J.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1971.tb50603.x
Subject(s) - marital status , clinical psychology , psychology , medicine , breast cancer , family medicine , disease , scale (ratio) , cancer , environmental health , pathology , population , physics , quantum mechanics
Two hundred and seventy‐four randomly selected women were interviewed with the aim of identifying variables related to presentation for cervical cytological screening. Thirty‐eight per cent had had the test, 41% on the patient's initiative and 59% at the doctor's instigation. Screening status was related to age, marital status, socio‐economic level, number of domestic dependants, holding of medical insurance, and the habit of breast self‐examination, although smoking was not related. Using the semantic differential scale as an attitude measure, a positive association was found between both evaluation and understanding of the medical profession and screening status. Because significantly more “screened” respondents named cancer as the “most worrying disease”, the role of fear as a motivational factor was explored, and it is suggested that fear may have opposite motivational effects in different psychological types. This has implications both for the interpretation of survey data in this field and for the practice of cancer education.