What is known?
The success of cancer screening programs, such as the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (NBCSP) in Australia, depends on public participation. However, currently less than half of the number of people invited to the program return their screening kit. Studying and understanding barriers that prevent people from participating in such programs is vital to create interventions and change policy to increase screening rates. To conduct such research, valid survey tools to measure screening barriers are needed.
What is new?
This study aimed to validate and refine the BB-CanS scale; a measure of barriers to home bowel cancer screening, with a new, large, and varied sample of 1158 p 50 – 74 year olds. The study showed that BB-CanS was a reliable measure of barriers to bowel cancer screening in different groups of people (e.g., males vs females, those under 60 vs those 60 and over).
Age and gender differences were evident in the barriers reported and all barriers were associated with screening participation.
What does this mean?
The BB-CanS scale can be used in future research to reliably measure barriers to home bowel cancer screening including disgust relating to screening, avoidance of test outcomes, practical difficulty (or challenges), and the need for a sense of greater autonomy. These findings can be used to inform interventions to increase screening participation in national bowel cancer screening programs.
Contact: Belinda Goodwin
Reference: Myers L, Goodwin B, Viljoen B, Roe CG, Ireland MJ. The Barriers to Bowel Cancer Screening Scale: Examining Structural Validity, Measurement Invariance, and Criterion Validity. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. 2023; 29(5):E190-e197.