Introduction
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women of all ages. About 1-3 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime worldwide. It is the third leading cause of death in women [
1]. Screening is one of the ways for early diagnosis to reduce the mortality rate [
4]. Increasing health literacy is among the most important factors in encouraging women with breast cancer to undergo screening [
6]. However, high awareness of cancer or cancer literacy does not always end in positive results; in some people, who may have already witnessed the cancer of people around them, knowing more about the symptoms of cancer can increase anxiety [
10]. Anxiety plays an important role in taking preventive measures, especially avoiding screening for breast cancer [
14]. Maheu et al. [
15] introduced the fear of cancer as a multidimensional construct, including stimuli, feelings, thoughts, physiological reactions, and coping strategies against cancer. Lee et al. [
17] stated that high levels of concern about breast cancer can motivate women to have mammography. Popa-Velea et al. [
26] showed that psychological resilience affects the perception of quality of life in cancer patients. Psychological resilience refers to the ability to resist changes [
20] or a positive capacity to adapt to stress [
21]. People with high psychological resilience against stress find positive meaning and can face problems and unfortunate situations more easily [
22]. This research aims to model the relationship of breast cancer screening with health anxiety and cancer literacy, mediated by psychological resilience.
Methods
This is a descriptive correlational study. The study population consists of all women over 40 years of age referred to the mammography clinics of specialized and super-specialized hospitals in Rasht, Iran from March to July 2022. Of these, 300 were selected by a convenience sampling method. The data collection tools included:
Mammography and breast cancer screening questionnaire: It was designed by Nourizadeh et al. [
4], having 34 items rated on a 4-point Likert from 1 (insufficient) to 4 (completely sufficient). Higher scores indicate unwillingness to undergo breast cancer screening. Nourizadeh et al. reported the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the whole questionnaire as 0.78, and the test-retest reliability coefficient (with a two-week interval) was 0.91. In the current study, Cronbach’s alpha of the whole questionnaire was calculated as 0.79.
Health anxiety inventory: It was developed by Salkovskis et al. [
31], having 18 items rated from 0 to 3, with a high score indicating higher health anxiety. The test-retest reliability of this questionnaire is 0.90 and its Cronbach’s alpha coefficient ranges from 0.70 to 0.82 [
31]. For the Persian version, Nargesi [
32] reported a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87. In the present study, Cronbach’s alpha of the Persian version was calculated as 0.83.
Breast cancer awareness scale: It was designed by Momayyezi & Fallahzadeh [
5], having 30 items rated on a 3-point Likert scale as 1 (no), 2 (no idea), and 3 (yes). Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for all dimensions is higher than 0.80, and the intraclass correlation coefficient is in the range of 0.84-0.95. In the present study, the Cronbach’s alpha of this questionnaire was calculated as 0.82.
Connor-Davidson resilience scale: It was developed by Conner & Davidson [
33], having 25 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 0 (not true at all) to 4 (true nearly all of the time). A score less than 50 indicates lower psychological resilience while a score greater than 50 indicates greater psychological resilience. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of this tool is 0.89 and the factor analysis coefficient is equal to 0.87 [
33]. Mohammadi et al. [
34] confirmed the Persian version’s construct validity and internal consistency and reported a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89.
Results
Mean scores of breast cancer screening, health anxiety, cancer literacy, and psychological resilience were 77.16±8.08, 33.67±5.65, 67.54±6.56, and 87.21±12.10, respectively. The results of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test showed that all the studied variables had a normal distribution (P>0.05). The values of GFI, Normed Fit Index, incremental fit index, comparative fit index, and Tucker–Lewis index were obtained as 0.99, 0.97, 0.99, 0.98, and 0.99, respectively, and the root mean square error of approximation was equal to 0.056, indicating the appropriate fit of the model.
The path coefficient between health anxiety and breast cancer screening was 0.38; between health anxiety and psychological resilience, 0.25; between health anxiety and cancer literacy, -0.22; between cancer literacy and breast cancer screening, -0.11; between cancer literacy and psychological resilience, -0.17; and between psychological resilience and breast cancer screening, 0.25. Also, cancer literacy had a significant indirect relationship with breast cancer screening through psychological resilience. Health anxiety also had a significant indirect relationship with breast cancer screening through psychological resilience (
Figure 1).
Conclusions
The results showed that health anxiety had a positive direct relationship with breast cancer screening, which is consistent with the findings of Park and Lim [
16]. Women with high anxiety about their health are more likely to undergo breast cancer screenings. Cancer literacy had a direct negative relationship with breast cancer screening, which is inconsistent with the findings of Lewis et al. [
7] but consistent with the findings of Ilic and Misso [
11]. Psychological resilience had a direct positive relationship with breast cancer screening. These results are in line with the findings of Edward et al. [
25] and Popa-Vilia et al. [
26]. Many women may not have the ability to face the screening results due to their low resilience and tolerance and refuse to do it. Cancer literacy had a significant indirect relationship with breast cancer screening through psychological resilience. Thus, an increase in health literacy leads to a decrease in psychological resilience. Health anxiety also had an indirect relationship with breast cancer screening through psychological resilience. Psychological resilience reduces negative emotions and worries and increases the adaptation ability in a person; by creating a sense of empowerment, it leads to changes in health-related behavior such as screening [
40].
Overall, it can be concluded that health anxiety is related to increased breast cancer screening, but health literacy is related to decreased breast cancer screening. Psychological resilience can mediate the relationship of health anxiety and health literacy with breast cancer screenings.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Mohaghegh Ardabili (Code: IR.UMA.REC.1401.004).
Funding
This study was funded by the University of Mohaghegh Ardabili.
Authors contributions
Conceptualization: Matine Ebadi and Sajjad Basharpoor; investigation: Arefe Mohamadnezhad Devin and Matine Ebadi; Editing and review: Sajjad Basharpoor and Arefe Mohamadnezhad Devin.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the officials and staff of Negah Imaging Center and Al-Zahra Hospital in Rasht and all the women participated in this research.
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