Background: Videotaped education materials to teach breast self-examination (BSE) are used worldwide. However, evaluation of videotaped BSE instructions is lacking.
Methods: Premenopausal women (mean age 33.4+/-11.2 years) without history of breast cancer were approached to participate in this experimental study and randomly assigned to a video intervention group (VG; n = 130: length of the video = 15 min) or non-video comparison group (NVG; n = 121). All participants answered a questionnaire on BSE behavior and health beliefs. No additional training was given. The total duration of the session including completion of the questionnaire was 15 min for the NVG and 30 min for the VG. Three months later, changes in BSE behavior were compared in the two groups. The influence of health beliefs on actual BSE behavior was investigated as well.
Results: Women of both the VG and NVG performed BSE significantly more frequently at follow-up than at baseline. Analysis of covariance, using the baseline BSE-frequency as co-variate and the follow-up BSE frequency as the dependent variable, revealed that women in the VG (adjusted mean = 7.9 times per year, 95%CI = 6.5-9.4) performed BSE more frequently than women of the NVG (adjusted mean = 6.1 times per year, 95%CI = 4.6-7.5) (F = 4.2, df= 2, p = 0.02). Among motivational predictors, having an example of a role model (modeling) was shown by regression analysis to explain the greatest amount of variance (13%) in BSE frequency.
Conclusion: Use of an educational videotape increased the frequency of BSE among premenopausal women.