title: Socioeconomic status and African Americans' perceptions of cancer.
abstract: A descriptive study was conducted with 139 (N=139) African-Americans (AA) to determine the relationship of socioeconomic status (SES) to the perceptions held by these individuals regarding cancer screening and early cancer detection, cancer risk factors, susceptibility to cancer and thoughts about cancer prevention. Findings from this study suggest that among these African-Americans, both gender (p = 0.03) and SES (p = 0.01) were significant predictors of participants' perceptions regarding cancer risk factors, early cancer detection (p = 0.0001), and cancer prevention (p = 0.0001). However there was no significant relationship between age, gender SES, and past experience with cancer and participants' perceptions of cancer screening and susceptibility to cancer. When age and gender were statistically controlled, SES was significantly related to participants' perceptions of cancer risk factors, early detection, prevention, screening and susceptibility. The findings from this study suggest a need for additional research about the relationships between higher SES African-Americans and their perceptions of cancer.
authors.affiliation: Division of Nursing, Howard University, College of Pharmacy, Nursing, and Allied Health Sciences, Washington, DC 20059, USA. vclarke-tasker@howard.edu
authors.forename: Veronica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Clarke-Tasker
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000517:prevention & control*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States