Health Education Research Advance Access originally published online on May 20, 2004
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Health Education Research, Vol. 19, No. 4, 469-475,
August 2004
© 2004 Oxford University Press
Unraveling women's perceptions of risk for breast cancer
1 School of Nursing and 2 Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 2B5, 3 British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, BC, Canada V5Z 4E6 and 4 Faculty of Nursing, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2N2
5 Correspondence to: J. L. Bottorff; E-mail: bottorff{at}nursing.ubc.ca
Inconsistent reports of the prevalence of risk perception accuracy may be related to the use of different classification strategies. The purpose of this study was to compare two approaches for assessing the accuracy of women's breast cancer risk perceptions. A telephone survey was conducted with an age-stratified random sample of British Columbian women 2079 years of age without a breast cancer diagnosis (n = 761). A comparison of two methods employed to determine perception accuracy revealed substantial differences between the methods with regard to the classification of women as under- and over-estimators. The study highlights the need for researchers to consider the method used to determine the accuracy of risk perceptions and the implications of using different strategies to assess risk perception accuracy when such information is used in research or to guide interventions.