Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 1, 2021
Date Accepted: Jul 27, 2021
Effects of message framing on cancer prevention and detection behaviors, intentions and attitudes: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
With the increase in the cancer burden, public health organizations are increasingly emphasizing the importance of calling people to take long-term prevention and periodical detection. An important issue that how to construct behavioral recommendations and health outcomes in messages.
Objective:
The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the message framing effect to persuade people of cancer prevention and detection.
Methods:
Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed 3 electronic databases (from 2000 to 2020) were searched. Studies were appraised for quality using the Modified Jadad Scale. Data analyzed by random-effects models in meta-analysis.
Results:
24 studies met the criteria for meta-analysis and represented data from the type of persuasiveness (attitude, intention, behavior) and conducted pre-planned subgroup analyses based on the type of cancer-related health behavior (prevention, detection). A loss-framed message is more likely than a gain-framed message to encourage cancer detection behaviors (OR=0.79, 95%CI 0.69 to 0.90, p=0.001), particularly breast cancer and cervical cancer, and the effects will be weak with time. No effect of framing was found when persuasion was assessed by attitudes/intentions or among studies encouraging cancer prevention and cancer detection.
Conclusions:
Research has shown that it is impossible to change people's attitudes or intentions towards cancer prevention and detection with gain or loss-framed messages, but the loss framing does affect persuading people to adopt cancer detection behaviors.
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