Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 10, 2020
Date Accepted: Jun 14, 2021
Association of Social Media with Cancer Screening Awareness and Behavior for People without a Cancer Diagnosis: Matched Cohort Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Using social media in communications regarding cancer prevention is rapidly growing. However, less is known about the general population’s social media use related to the awareness of screening for different cancers.
Objective:
To examine the relationship between social media use and cancer screening awareness among people without a diagnosis of cancer.
Methods:
Data was from the Health Information National Trends Survey 5 Cycle 1 – 3 in America (N = 12,227). 10,124 participants without a cancer diagnosis were included. This study included seven measures of cancer screening awareness, who had prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests, Papanicolaou (Pap) tests for cervical cancer, breast cancer tests, and colon cancer tests; and had heard of hepatitis C virus (HCV), human papillomavirus (HPV), and the HPV vaccine. Propensity-score matching was conducted to adjust the sociodemographic variables between the social media user and non-user participants. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess the association of social media use by gender.
Results:
Of the 3794 matched participants, 1861 (57.6%) were male, and the mean (SD) age was 55.5 (0.42) years. Compared to social media non-users, the users were more likely to have heard of HCV and HPV among males (HCV: adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.27; 95% CI, 1.29 – 3.98. HPV: aOR, 1.82; 95% CI, 1.29 – 2.58) and females (HCV: aOR, 2.86; 95% CI, 1.51 – 5.40. HPV: aOR, 2.35; 95% CI, 1.65 – 3.33), and that of HPV vaccine for females (aOR, 2.06; 95% CI, 1.41 – 3.00). No significant associations of social media use were found with taking PSA tests in males, Pap and breast cancer tests in females, or colon cancer tests in both males and females.
Conclusions:
Social media services have the potential to promote the awareness of cancer screening for the general population, after adjusting for socioeconomic status. These findings strengthened our understanding of health communications targeting different cancers though the use of social media.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.