Colon cancer: risk perceptions and risk communication

Area of Science:

• Health behavior
• Risk perception
• Health communication

Background:

• Accurate risk perception is crucial for health decision-making.
• Individuals frequently misjudge their personal health risks, often overestimating them.
• Understanding these misjudgments is key to effective health interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess how individuals perceive their 20-year colon cancer risk.
• To evaluate the impact of personalized computer-generated risk feedback on risk perception accuracy.
• To explore reasons for non-acceptance of personalized risk information.

Main Methods:

• A health maintenance organization (N=353) used a computer program for personalized colon cancer risk feedback.
• Participants' absolute and relative risk perceptions were measured before and after feedback.
• Correlations between perceived risk, actual risk factors, and feedback acceptance were analyzed.

Main Results:

• Most participants initially overestimated both absolute and relative colon cancer risks.
• Computer feedback improved average risk estimate accuracy, but approximately 50% rejected their personalized feedback.
• Correlations between actual and perceived risk did not improve significantly post-feedback for those receiving scores.

Conclusions:

• Personalized risk feedback can enhance risk estimate accuracy but faces challenges in user acceptance.
• Initial overestimation of risk is common, and relative risk perception is more aligned with risk factors than absolute risk perception.
• Further research is needed to understand and overcome resistance to health risk information.