APPLYING VERBAL PROTOCOL ANALYSIS TO INVESTIGATE THE DECISION-MAKING STRATEGIES MEN USE WHEN CONSIDERING PROSTATE CANCER RISK FACTORS AND EARLY DETECTION SCREENING BEHAVIOUR: COMPARING MEN WITH AND WITHOUT A FAMILY HISTORY

Purpose: To investigate how heuristic and systematic information processing strategies are used to guide judgements about prostate cancer risk and prostate cancer screening decisions and to compare whether having a family history influences strategy use.

Method: First-degree relatives of men with prostate cancer (n=32) and men without a family history of prostate cancer (n=50) from Queensland, Australia completed a verbal protocol analysis interview.  Participants responded to questions about what they had considered when deciding whether or not to participate in prostate cancer screening and when considering their prostate cancer risk.  Responses were coded according to the use of the representativeness, availability, and affect heuristics and in terms of systematic strategies (e.g., information seeking, consideration of risk factors, screening recommendations).

Result: Men with a family history of prostate cancer used a greater total number of heuristic strategies on average than did men without a family history.  Men with a family history were more likely to use positive instances of the availability heuristic when discussing prostate cancer risk and screening decisions than were men without a family history.  Men with a family history were also more likely to make use of negative affect to guide judgements about their personal risk of prostate cancer.  Few men used systematic processing strategies or mentioned any of the risks, benefits or uncertainties associated with early detection screening for prostate cancer.

Conclusion: Although men with a family history of prostate cancer tend to use heuristic strategies more frequently than do men without a family history, the types of heuristic strategies used by all men were largely the same.  These findings suggest that the ways in which men may differ in terms of their processing of cancer-related information relates to how they integrate information within their existing knowledge structures.