The Effects of Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Education on Cancer-related Knowledge, Attitudes, and Preventive Health Behavior of Middle-aged Women in Korea

Park, Sun Young; Park, Chung Ja; Park, Jeong Sook

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of cancer prevention and early detection education on cancer-related knowledge, attitudes, and preventive health behavior of middle-aged women in Korea. The research design was a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design. The subjects of this study were 38 middle-aged women from a church in Taegu. An Experimental group of 19 and a control group of 19 women were studied. The study was conducted from September 21, 2000 to October 27, 2000. The cancer prevention and early detection education had been provided to the experimental group for 2 weeks. The contents of the education program for the third most prevalent cancer of Korean women were: 'the risk factors of cancer', 'the early symptoms of cancer', 'the diagnostic test for cancer detection', and 'the cancer prevention methods'. The instruments used for this study were modified, cancer-related knowledge, and attitude, preventive health behavior tools of Suh et al.(1998). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, X2-test, t-test, ANCOVA with SPSS WIN 9.0/PC. The results were as follows: 1) Hypothesis 1 that the women who get cancer prevention and early detection education will have higher scores of the cancer-related knowledge than the women do not get cancer prevention and early detection education was accepted(F=4.732, p=.037). 2) Hypothesis 2 that the women who get cancer prevention and early detection education will have higher scores of cancer-related attitudes than the women do not get cancer prevention and early detection education was rejected(F=.118, p=.733). 3) Hypothesis 3 that the women who get cancer prevention and early detection education will have higher scores of cancer-related preventive health behavior than the women who do not get cancer prevention and early detection education was rejected(F=2.250, p=.143). On the basis of the above findings, the following recommendations are suggested: 1)It is necessary to identify the variables affected on cancer-related knowledge, attitudes and preventive health behavior. 2) It is necessary to develop a well organized cancer prevention and early detection education program to change cancer-related attitude and preventive health behavior.