Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/29787
Appears in Collections:Psychology Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: The impact of descriptive norms on motivation to participate in cancer screening - Evidence from online experiments
Author(s): von Wagner, Christian
Hirst, Yasemin
Waller, Jo
Ghanouni, Alexander
McGregor, Lesley M.
Kerrison, Robert
Verstraete, Wouter
Vlaev, Ivo
Sieverding, Monica
Stoffel, Sandro
Contact Email: l.m.mcgregor@stir.ac.uk
Keywords: Descriptive norm information
Social norms
Decision making
Behaviour change
Health behaviour
Cancer screening
Issue Date: Sep-2019
Date Deposited: 27-Jun-2019
Citation: von Wagner C, Hirst Y, Waller J, Ghanouni A, McGregor LM, Kerrison R, Verstraete W, Vlaev I, Sieverding M & Stoffel S (2019) The impact of descriptive norms on motivation to participate in cancer screening - Evidence from online experiments. Patient Education and Counseling, 102 (9), pp. 1621-1628. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2019.04.001
Abstract: Objective The current study tested in two online experiments whether manipulating normative beliefs about cancer screening uptake increases intention to attend colorectal screening among previously disinclined individuals. Methods 2461 men and women from an Internet panel (Experiment 1 N = 1032; Experiment 2, N = 1423) who initially stated that they did not intend to take up screening were asked to guess how many men and women they believe to get screened for colorectal cancer. Across participants, we varied the presence/absence of feedback on the participant’s estimate, as well as the stated proportion of men and women doing the screening test. Results Across the two experiments, we found that receiving one of the experimental messages stating that uptake is higher than estimated significantly increased the proportion of disinclined men and women becoming intenders. While, we found a positive relationship between the communicated uptake and screening intentions, we did not find evidence that providing feedback on the estimate has an added benefit. Conclusion Screening intention can be effectively manipulated through a high uptake message. Practice implications Communication of high screening uptake is an easy and effective way to motivate disinclined individuals to engage in colorectal cancer screening.
DOI Link: 10.1016/j.pec.2019.04.001
Rights: Article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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