Awareness of Colorectal Cancer: Recognition of Symptoms and Risk Factors by Socio-demographic Characteristics

Health Belief Model-based Intervention on Women's Knowledge and Perceived Beliefs about Warning Signs of Cancer

“…These findings are similar to previous studies in populations. [1718] However, in our study, before the educational intervention, there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the participants in the intervention group compared to the control group in the three constructs of the HBM – “perceived benefits,” “perceived barriers,” and “cue to action.” Since the results of primary analyses in the beginning of the study showed that the intervention and control groups did not differ in terms of educational levels and previous knowledge of cancer warning signs, this difference could be attributed to individual personality or environmental factors, such as access to resources. Therefore, in this study, multivariate repeated-measures ANOVAs were used to investigate the genuine effectiveness of educational intervention.…”

“…These results are in line with previous studies. [1718] However, in our study, there was a significant increase in the mean scores obtained by the participants in the control group, 1 month after the pretest in five HBM constructs, including “perceived susceptibility,” “perceived severity,” “perceived barriers,” “cue to action,” and “perceived self-efficacy.” It can be said that although the control group had not gone through any education program, this slight increase might have been due to the retention of some information after completing the questionnaires, gathering of information from the media, and also women's tendency to obtain information about cancer warning signs after participation in the study.…”

“…[16] The results of an international study show that the general public's knowledge of cancer warning signs has been low in countries, such as India, Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and France. [17] A review of previous studies in Iran also shows that there are a few studies on the general public's knowledge and beliefs about the warning signs of cancers. [418] Therefore, investigating the level of perceived knowledge and beliefs of the people about cancer warning signs can play an important role in disease prevention at the community level.…”

Awareness Survey about Colorectal Cancer in Students of M. Phil Biotechnology at Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan

“…91.5% responded that there wasn't any case of CRC in their family [13]. In another study conducted among English population showed that only 10% of the participants were aware of the fact that CRC is ranked third among common type of cancers and merely 46% people knew some symptoms and risk factors of CRC [14]. There is another study regarding the awareness of CRC among the population of Perak state of Malaysia, and this study illustrated that 38% people had no knowledge regarding CRC [15].…”