Cervical Cancer Screening Beliefs among Indonesian Married Women

บทคัดย่อ

This cross-sectional descriptive study aimed to examine cervical cancer screening (CCS) beliefs and regular CCS history among 384 Indonesian married women aged 21 to 55 years in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Data were collected during July to September, 2014 by using modified Champion Health Beliefs Model Scale (CHBM). Chi-square and Logistic regression analysis were carried out to examine relationships among variables and identify predictors of regular CCS history (every 1-3 years). Results showed that only 13.8% of married women have regular CCS. Most of married women had high level of perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, and barriers of CCS. However, after controlling for confounding variables in  multivariate analysis, only perceived barriers and health insurance status were found to be associated with women’s regular CCS (p=0.000, OR=6.057, 95%CI: 2.973-12.340; and p= 0.008, OR=2.381, 95%CI: 1.249-4.539, respectively). The results confirmed that despite moderate to high levels of perceived susceptibility, severity, and benefits of CCS; the number of regular CCS among Indonesian married women was still low. The women with high perceived barriers are 6 times less likely to seek CCS. Important barriers reported from this study are male physicians, time-consuming for CCS procedure, and embarrassment. Effort to increase screening need to focus especially on women who have high perceived barriers so that CCS promotion can be achieved.