Burke Adam D, Burns Jared W, Chakraborty Swati, Saha Tanima, Ray Amitabha, Borsch Daniel M
Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine at Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, USA.
School of Natural and Health Sciences, Seton Hill University, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, USA.
J Educ Health Promot. 2022 Jun 30;11:187. doi: 10.4103/jehp.jehp_1422_21. eCollection 2022.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death globally. A considerable number of different cancer types may be preventable, using primary intervention techniques, such as health education, cancer awareness, behaviors and lifestyle modifications. The present study conducted a comparative assessment of cancer awareness among undergraduate students of the United States and India.
Students from an Institution in India (KC) (55 females, 33 males), and an Institution in the United States of America (SHU) (226 female, 58 male) during 2019-2020 participated in this study. Participants ( = 372) across all majors and all years (first through fourth year) completed an online questionnaire and answered the questions on their demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, and location), academic status (e.g., year of study, major), multiple-choice questions about cancer knowledge, and opinion questions (e.g., "where would you find info," "should therapies be free"). Student responses were collected using Qualtrics Survey Software. Excel was used to analyze responses. We conducted statistical Χ tests for independence to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the expected frequencies and the observed frequencies in one or more categories of a contingency table, with a significance of ɑ = 0.01. While small sizes due to the small institutions and the response pool, we note that we achieved the necessary "n" for all tests reported.
Our research shows a few important statistically significant differences, including knowledge of cancer and breast lumps is dependent on location, ranking of global cancer deaths is dependent on location, and that cancer knowledge is dependent on the information source. All for Χ tests with < 0.001.
Further encouragement of education for young people in various aspects of cancer and cancer prevention, as well as information facility and sources of reliable data, could be helpful for improving the overall health and primary prevention. A thorough assessment is needed to understand the responsible factors for the observed cancer knowledge variations among students of two different places.
癌症是全球主要死因之一。相当一部分不同类型的癌症可以通过初级干预技术预防，如健康教育、癌症认知、行为和生活方式改变。本研究对美国和印度的本科生癌症认知情况进行了比较评估。
2019 - 2020年期间，来自印度一所机构（KC）的学生（55名女性，33名男性）和美国一所机构（SHU）的学生（226名女性，58名男性）参与了本研究。所有专业和各年级（大一至大四）的372名参与者完成了一份在线问卷，回答了有关其人口统计学特征（如性别、年龄和地点）、学业状况（如学习年份、专业）、关于癌症知识的多项选择题以及意见问题（如“你会从哪里获取信息”“治疗是否应该免费”）。使用Qualtrics调查软件收集学生的回答。使用Excel分析回答。我们进行了独立性统计χ²检验，以确定列联表中一个或多个类别的预期频率和观察频率之间是否存在统计学上的显著差异，显著性水平ɑ = 0.01。尽管由于机构规模小和样本量有限，但我们注意到我们为所有报告的测试都达到了必要的“n”。
我们的研究显示了一些重要的统计学显著差异，包括对癌症和乳腺肿块的认知取决于地点，全球癌症死亡排名取决于地点，以及癌症知识取决于信息来源。所有χ²检验的p值均<0.001。
进一步鼓励针对年轻人开展癌症及癌症预防各方面的教育，以及提供信息设施和可靠数据来源，可能有助于改善整体健康和初级预防。需要进行全面评估，以了解两个不同地区学生中观察到的癌症知识差异的相关因素。
