Travis, E., Ashley, L. and O'Connor, D.B. (2024) Effects of a self-affirmation intervention on responses to bowel cancer screening information. Psychology and Health. ISSN 0887-0446
Abstract
Objective To investigate the effect of two brief self-affirmation interventions, immediately prior to reading standard information about bowel cancer screening, on state anxiety, message acceptance and behavioural intention to screen for bowel cancer.
Methods 242 adults aged 49 were randomised to one of two self-affirmation interventions (health or values) or one of two control conditions, before reading an NHS England bowel cancer screening leaflet. Participant friend and family history of bowel cancer, state anxiety, message acceptance, behavioural intention to screen, trait self-esteem and spontaneous self-affirmation were measured. Data were analysed using between-participants analysis of variance, planned contrasts and moderated regression.
Results No main effects of experimental condition on levels of state anxiety, message acceptance and behavioural intention were found. However, planned contrasts showed participants who self-affirmed about their health or values (conditions-collapsed) were significantly less anxious and reported significantly higher behavioural intentions compared to participants in the controls (conditions-collapsed). Irrespective of condition, higher levels of spontaneous self-affirmation and trait self-esteem were correlated with lower anxiety, higher intentions, and message acceptance.
Conclusion There was some evidence of the effect of health-based self-affirmation on lowering anxiety; however, further research is needed to explore the effectiveness of different self-affirmation interventions in larger samples.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 the author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0). |
Keywords: | Bowel cancer screening, self-affirmation, fecal immunochemical test, patient anxiety, message acceptance, behavioural intention |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 20 Dec 2023 13:00 |
Last Modified: | 08 Apr 2024 11:57 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/08870446.2024.2332265 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:206794 |
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