Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 25, 2026

E-Patient Counseling Trial (E-PACO): Computer Based Education versus Nurse Counseling for Patients to Prepare for Colonoscopy
Published on: August 1, 2019
College students' perceived disease risk versus actual prevalence rates
Matthew Lee Smith1, Justin B Dickerson, Erica T Sosa
1Department of Health Promotion and Behavior, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA. matthew.smith@srph.tamhsc.edu
Objective:
To compare college students' perceived disease risk with disease prevalence rates.
Methods:
Data were analyzed from 625 college students collected with an Internet-based survey. Paired t-tests were used to separately compare participants' perceived 10-year and lifetime disease risk for 4 diseases: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and overweight/obesity.
Results:
Respondents estimated their risk of developing heart disease as lower than cancer, yet rated their risk of developing heart disease as higher than diabetes and being overweight/obese.
Conclusion:
Incongruence between college students' perceived disease risk and disease prevalence rates calls for improved public health education.
Related Concept Videos
Prevalence and Incidence
Prevalence indicates the proportion of individuals in a population who have a specific disease or health condition at a...
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast, controlled...
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention II
The agent-host-environment model states that disease results from...
Surveys
Infectious Diseases and Their Occurrence
Factors Affecting Illness
For instance, risk factors are connected to illness, disability,...