Explaining breast self-examination practice.

Research efforts to discover why women do or do not perform breast self-examination (BSE) have produced contradictory findings with poor explanatory power. In this study, ethnoscience was used to elicit the perceptions of women who perform BSE and of those who do not. The components of the emerging taxonomies are broader than those currently thought to be associated with this practice. A new model (BSE frequency model) explaining compliance with BSE was developed.