Towards informed decisions on breast cancer screening: Development and pilot testing of a decision aid for Chinese women

Abstract

Objective: To pilot-test a novel, self-use breast cancer (BC) screening decision aid (DA) targeting Hong Kong (HK) Chinese women at average risk of BC.

Methods: Women were recruited through a population-based telephone survey using random digit dialling between October 2013 and January 2014. Eligible participants completed our baseline survey and then received the DA by post. Participants (n=90) completed follow-up telephone interviews one month later.

Results: Most participants thought that all/most DA content was presented clearly (86.7%), and was useful in helping women make screening-related decisions (88.9%). It also achieved its expected impact of improving informed decision-making and increasing shared-participation preference without increasing participants' anxiety levels. Participants showed a modest non-statistical increase in their screening knowledge scores. Older women rated the perceived severity of a BC diagnosis as significantly lower, and more educated women reported significantly lower perceived anxiety about the disease.

Conclusion: Our DA appears acceptable and feasible for self-use by HK Chinese women who need to make an informed decision about BC screening without increasing overall anxiety levels.

Practice implications: This study supports the potential of self-use DAs for cancer screening-related decision support in a Chinese population.

Keywords: Breast cancer screening; Chinese; Decision aid; Informed decision.