Background: This study aimed to seek insights into Chinese women's lay beliefs about cervical cancer causal attributions and prevention. Materials and Methods: Twenty-three new immigrant adult women from Mainland China and thirty-five Hong Kong adult women underwent semi-structured in-depth interviews. Interviews were audio taped, transcribed and analyzed using a Grounded Theory approach. Results: This study generated three foci: causal beliefs about cervical cancer, perceived risk of cervical cancer, and beliefs about cervical cancer prevention. Personal risky practices, contaminated food and environment pollution were perceived as the primary causes of cervical cancer. New immigrant women more likely attributed cervical cancer to external factors. Most participants perceived cervical cancer as an important common fatal female cancer with increased risk/prevalence. Many participants, particularly new immigrant women participants, expressed helplessness about cervical cancer prevention due to lack of knowledge of prevention, it being perceived as beyond individual control. Many new immigrant participants had never undergone regular cervical screening while almost all Hong Kong participants had done so. Conclusions: Some Chinese women hold pessimistic beliefs about cervical cancer prevention with inadequate knowledge about risk factors. Future cervical cancer prevention programs should provide more information and include capacity building to increase Chinese women's knowledge and self-efficacy towards cervical cancer prevention.
Information trust was associated with vaccination intention but not actual uptake whereas encouragement from family/friends facilitates women's HPV vaccination. Continued efforts are needed to ensure Chinese women adopting cervical cancer preventive behaviors, and must consider different specific needs of population subgroups.
Poultry farmers faced dual risk when mutant avian influenza (AI) virus showed the zoonotic characteristics. A/H5N1 and A/H7N9 were two dominant AI virus strains that have captured the attention of the public over the years for they have been reported to bring about greater loss to poultry and human, respectively. Previous studies mainly used quantitative methods investigating either the means that poultry farmers adopted for protecting their poultry against A/H5N1 infection or the poultry farmers' self‐protective behaviours against A/H7N9 infection. We sought insights into the underlying factors influencing Chinese poultry farmers' protective behaviours in response to the dual risk of AI by a qualitative way. Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were conducted with 25 Chinese chicken farmers recruited by purposive sampling between November 2016 and May 2017, the peak season of AI. All interviews were audio‐taped, transcribed and analysed using a grounded theory approach. From participants' experiences, we revealed five main themes: Measures adopted for protecting poultry and farmers, Emotional response to the AI epidemic, Perceived risk of AI, Perceived effectiveness of the preventive measures adopted and Perceived self‐efficacy to take preventive measures. The information of AI outbreak directly triggered Chinese chicken farmers' emotional response and thereafter preventive actions. Compared to the perceived risk of poultry infection with A/H5N1 which mainly connected to economic loss, participants perceived much lower risk of human infection with A/H7N9. AI epidemic information played a key role triggering poultry farmers' response behaviours. Chinese poultry farmers weighted more attention on the risk of poultry infection which was highly associated with economic losses. The government should build and improve an early AI warning and information transmission network to poultry farmers. Further reinforcement of related self‐protective and preventive knowledge training towards poultry farmers is necessary.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.