Informed choice: understanding knowledge in the context of screening uptake

Area of Science:

• Reproductive Health
• Medical Education
• Health Psychology

Background:

• Assessing patient knowledge is crucial for informed decision-making in healthcare.
• Screening tests during pregnancy require adequate understanding for effective uptake and adherence.
• The Multidimensional Measure of Informed Choice (MMIC) is a tool used to evaluate patient understanding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a scale measuring knowledge about a specific pregnancy screening test.
• To investigate the relationship between this knowledge, screening uptake, and women's attitudes.
• To assess the importance of knowledge items from both pregnant women's and healthcare professionals' perspectives.

Main Methods:

• 1,499 pregnant women completed the MMIC knowledge scale.
• 345 women and 152 healthcare professionals rated the importance of knowledge items.
• Item characteristic curves were used to analyze the psychometric properties of the knowledge scale.

Main Results:

• The knowledge scale demonstrated good discrimination and a range of difficulty across items.
• Both women and professionals deemed most knowledge items essential or helpful, with some variations.
• No significant association was found between knowledge level and screening uptake or attitudes.

Conclusions:

• The developed knowledge scale effectively measures understanding of the screening test.
• Knowledge alone does not appear to be a primary driver for screening test uptake or influence attitudes.
• Further research should explore other determinants of screening behavior in pregnant populations.