The relationship between women's health beliefs and their participation in screening mammography.

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women. Early diagnosis of this disease can reduce mortality significantly and will promote women's quality of life. Changes in the women's beliefs and attitudes are necessary to encourage them to undergo screening mammography. To make this change happen, understanding their health beliefs is important. This attempt is to determine the relationship between women's health belief of city of Kerman with their participation in mammography on the basis of health belief model in the year 2005-2006. This study was an experimental-control one in which the main independent variable was health belief including different dimensions such as perceived sensitivity, perceived intensity, perceived barriers, perceived benefits, "cues to actions" and self-efficacy. Participation in the mammography was taken as the dependent variable. Two samples consisting of 148 women who had and 148 women who had not underwent mammography were selected. Data were collected through questionnaires and were analyzed by SPSS=12 software. The result of this study showed that women's health belief in some dimensions of health belief model such as perceived benefits of mammography use, the presence of cues to action in mammography use is associated with having mammography. Moreover the total score of mammography group was more than the score of the group without the mammography. When the two groups were compared in terms of demographic data, experimental group showed significant statistical differences with regard to age, benign breast mass and family history of breast cancer. (P, 0001)Understanding the benefits and advantages of mammography and cues to action will increase women's adherence toward doing it. It is of great importance to better realize breast cancer screening behaviors and factors influencing it. It is also necessary to recognize the factors affecting health professionals' and particularly nurses' use of mammography.