Due to the emergence of personalized breast cancer screening, it will be possible to categorize women to, for example, low, moderate or high risk profiles in the near future. These profiles will increase the personal relevance of the screening result for women, but also its complexity. Currently, communication of the outcome addresses a dichotomous mammography result (i.e. either abreast abnormality or not). Personalized screening will result in communication of a personalized multifaceted risk message (a): no breast abnormality found;(b) personalized risk profile (low, medium, high risk);(c) corresponding advice for follow-up screening interval. Apart from the question to what extent such risk messages will influence women’s acceptance of the advised follow-up interval, it is essential to know how they will understand this personalized risk message. Adequate comprehension of one’s breast cancer risk is a main precondition for making well-informed further decisions in the screening program. Visualization of risk information seems a promising approach to support risk comprehension in addition to textual/numerical risk information, but visualizations can also generate unwarranted effects, especially among lower health literacy (HL) individuals.This project aims to design and test novel (interactive) visualizations of risk information in personalized breast cancer screening. Specific aims: (1) To gain insight in methods and underlying mechanisms of risk visualizations that support risk comprehension; (2) To design risk visualizations that support comprehension of the personalized multifaceted risk message for each risk profile (low, medium, high risk); (3) To assess the effects of the risk visualizations on risk comprehension (primary outcome), risk perception, worry, anxiety, attitudes towards participation, and hypothetical decisions/intentions regarding the follow-up interval (secondary outcomes).The underlying data and the designed visualizations are not available in dansEasy, but they can be shared upon request (please contact the project leader). The total project protocol is available in DansEasy, as well as the used protocols for interviews and co-creation sessions, all in Dutch. Study 3 of the project (related to aim 3 as described above) has been pregistered in OSF: https://osf.io/r723n
Date: 2022-05-27
Date Submitted: 2022-05-31
