Rakkapao Nitchamon, Promthet Supannee, Moore Malcolm A, Hurst Cameron P
Doctor of Public Health Program, Khon Kaen University, Thailand E-mail :
Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2016;17(2):851-6. doi: 10.7314/apjcp.2016.17.2.851.
Breast cancer is a major health problem among women around the world. Recent developments in screening and treatment have greatly improved the prognosis of patients with breast cancer in developed countries. However, in developing countries breast cancer mortality remains high.Breast cancer awareness is a first and important step in reducing breast cancer mortality. The development of a validated instrument to measure breast cancer awareness is crucial for the understanding and implementation of suitable health education programs to facilitate early deletion and minimize mortality.
The objective of this study was to develop an instrument for the assessment of breast cancer awareness in Thai women.
This methodological study was conducted in two stages: (1) literature searches and semi-structured interviews were conducted to generate items of the breast cancer awareness scale (B-CAS) which were subsequently examined for content and face validity, and (2) an exploration of the factor structure of the resulting instrument and an examination of its reliability. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire in Thai women aged 20-64 in August, 2015.
A total of 219 women (response rate 97.4 %) participated in this validation study. The B-CAS contains five domains with 53 items on breast cancer awareness: 1) knowledge of risk factors, 2) knowledge of signs and symptoms, 3) attitude to breast cancer prevention, 4) barriers of breast screening, and 5) health behavior related to breast cancer awareness. Items with a content validity index <0.80 were excluded, and factor structure for the remaining items reflected the hypothesized five factor model. The scales based on all retained items was shown to have strongly internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's α=0.86).
The B-CAS provides good psychometric properties to assess breast cancer awareness in women. It can be used to examine breast cancer awareness in Thai women and it could lead to the development and evaluation of suitable educational interventions for raising breast cancer awareness. Future research should focus on further validating the B-CAS including an assessment of construct and criterion-based validity.
乳腺癌是全球女性面临的一个主要健康问题。筛查和治疗方面的最新进展极大地改善了发达国家乳腺癌患者的预后。然而，在发展中国家，乳腺癌死亡率仍然很高。提高乳腺癌意识是降低乳腺癌死亡率的首要且重要的一步。开发一种经过验证的工具来衡量乳腺癌意识对于理解和实施合适的健康教育项目以促进早期发现并降低死亡率至关重要。
本研究的目的是开发一种用于评估泰国女性乳腺癌意识的工具。
本方法学研究分两个阶段进行：（1）进行文献检索和半结构化访谈以生成乳腺癌意识量表（B-CAS）的条目，随后对其进行内容和表面效度检查；（2）探索所得工具的因子结构并检查其信度。2015年8月，使用自填式问卷对20 - 64岁的泰国女性收集数据。
共有219名女性（应答率97.4%）参与了这项验证研究。B-CAS包含五个领域，共53个关于乳腺癌意识的条目：1）危险因素知识；2）体征和症状知识；3）乳腺癌预防态度；4）乳腺筛查障碍；5）与乳腺癌意识相关的健康行为。内容效度指数<0.80的条目被排除，其余条目的因子结构反映了假设的五因子模型。基于所有保留条目的量表显示具有很强的内部一致性信度（Cronbach's α = 0.86）。
B-CAS具有良好的心理测量特性，可用于评估女性的乳腺癌意识。它可用于检测泰国女性的乳腺癌意识，并可用于开发和评估提高乳腺癌意识的合适教育干预措施。未来的研究应侧重于进一步验证B-CAS，包括对结构效度和基于标准的效度的评估。
