 Breast cancer and breast self-examination: What do Scottish women know?M. Maureen Roberts, Kate French and John Duffy Social Science & Medicine, 1984, vol. 18, issue 9, 791-797 Abstract: To aid the design of a health education campaign centred around a breast screening programme, a survey of knowledge about breast cancer and breast self-examination was carried out in 810 women selected randomly from the electoral registers in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. On the whole, the level of knowledge was poor, but was strongly related to age, social class, previous experience of breast problems and preventive health behaviour. Very few women knew of signs to look for other than a lump or of any treatments other than mastectomy or radiotherapy. Although 57% had tried or were practising self-examination, only a small minority knew of the correct technique and when to do it. There may be several reasons for our findings, including previous lack of appropriate information from professional sources, avoidance due to fear and anxiety about breast cancer or lack of motivation because this disease is not seen as an important single threat. These results will be compared with a later survey as part of the evaluation of our health education campaign. Date: 1984 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:18:y:1984:i:9:p:791-797 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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