A Survey of the Knowledge and Beliefs of Retired Men about Prostate Cancer Screening Based on Health Belief Model

BACKGROUND Prostate cancer has been reported as the second leading cause of cancer death and the most common cancer diagnosed in men. Since Health Belief Model (HBM) has been intensively used for assessing health beliefs associated with cancer screening behaviors, we aimed to investigate the level of knowledge and health beliefs about prostate cancer screening among retired men. METHODS In this descriptive study carried out in 2013, we enrolled 180 men aged 50-70 years who were retired from Shiraz Education Department. Data were collected using three questionnaires including demographic questionnaire, HBM and the Knowledge about Prostate Cancer Screening questionnaires by interviewing the participants. RESULTS Our findings showed that 95.6% and 85.6% of the interviewees had no experience of digital rectal examination (DRE) and prostatic-specific-antigen (PSA) testing for prostate cancer screening, respectively. 86.1% of men had no knowledge about such screening. 12.7% of the respondents reported good knowledge scores. 74.4% and 90.5% of them had good health motivation and perceived benefits scores, respectively. 81.6% of them revealed intermediate scores for perceived barriers. Moreover, 32.7% and 7.2% of the subjects reported good severity and susceptibility scores, respectively. CONCLUSION Developing an assessment based on HBM could be effective in designing and implementing educational programs by helping to identify the needs and priorities of the target population.