Press Releases

Whether Women Seek Breast Cancer Screening May Depend on
How They Are Asked, Say Psychology Researchers at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus

Brooklyn, N.Y. – As any advertiser knows, a successful message must be framed in a way that affects the behavior of the target audience, and the same is true for health care messages. A recent study by Long Island University researchers looked at the effectiveness of differently framed messages about breast cancer screening on a racially mixed group of women with low incomes.

Despite being at risk for poorer screening, minority women and women of lower income have infrequently been considered in previous studies of health message framing, noted the researchers. Their study included 102 black and 42 white women with a mean income below $10,000, between the ages of 50 and 70 and living in Brooklyn, with a history of inadequate breast cancer screening. Each woman was contacted by telephone and randomly received one of three types of framed messages - loss, gain or empowerment - and re-contacted at six and 12 months.

A gain-framed message used statements like, “In getting regular mammograms, you gain greater treatment flexibility and increase the likelihood of a positive outcome.” An example of a loss-framed message was, “In failing to get regular mammograms you lose treatment flexibility and increase the likelihood of a negative outcome.” An empowerment-framed message was, “By getting regular mammograms, you can give yourself greater treatment options and greater control of the outcome.”

At 12 months, the loss- and the empowerment-framed messages elicited superior breast cancer screening behaviors than the gain messages. “We found that loss framing worked to an extent in all groups, but that empowerment worked particularly well over time for some types of screening,” said lead investigator Nathan S. Consedine, research assistant professor in the psychology department at the University’s Brooklyn Campus and deputy director of the University’s Intercultural Institute on Human Development & Aging.

The report, “Breast Screening in Response to Gain, Loss and Empowerment Framed Messages among Diverse Low-Income Women,” was published in the August (18.3) issue of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. In addition to Consedine, the authors are David Horton and Carol Magai of the University’s Intercultural Institute on Human Development & Aging and Rita Kukafka of Columbia University.

Long Island University’s Intercultural Institute on Human Development and Aging conducts both experimental and community survey projects on the socioeconomic, psychological, health and educational factors that affect the course of growth and development within cultural groups.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway lines and the Long Island Rail Road.