Empowerment beliefs and intention to uptake cervical cancer screening: three psychosocial mediating mechanisms.

Three studies tested if the associations between women's empowerment beliefs and intentions to attend cervical cancer screening could be explained by mediating psychological mechanisms: control-related beliefs, well being-related beliefs, and beliefs and evaluations referring to social functioning. Data were collected from January to March 2011 in the rural and urban areas across regions of Poland. Study 1 (N = 386) indicated that women with strong empowerment harbored stronger self-efficacy and beliefs that screening participation would make them feel in control of their own health and body. These two types of cognitions were, in turn, associated with stronger cervical cancer screening intentions. Results of Study 2 (N = 527) confirmed three significant well being-related mediators in the relationship between empowerment beliefs and cervical cancer screening: perceived benefits of screening related to well being, appearance satisfaction, discomfort- and shame-related barriers for screening. Finally, Study 3 (N = 424) showed that empowerment enabled receiving higher social support for cervical cancer screening, promoted perceiving fewer barriers for cervical cancer screening-related communication and more social benefits of engaging in cervical cancer screening. Support for cervical cancer screening, social barriers, and benefits were, in turn, related to screening intentions. Across the studies similar shares of intention variance were explained, and thus the hypothesized mediating mechanisms may have similar explanatory power.