Abstract:
Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women in both high-resource and low-resource countries. According to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, breast cancer accounts for 12% of all female cancers with the majority (60%) of breast cancer deaths occurring in less-developed countries. Despite the increasing rate of breast cancer deaths, there are a lots of women who do not examine their breast on regular basis and a lot more who do not seek medical assistance as early as possible. Currently, there is no national data available on breast cancer screening and the factors that influence screening behaviour among Ghanaian women. Although some literature about barriers to breast screening exist in Ghana, the factors which prevent women from screening their breast is under researched. There is therefore the need to investigate the factors which are likely to influence breast cancer screening among Ghanaian women so as to tackle this public health burden with effective preventive strategies. The goal of this study was to adapt the social cognitive framework to examine the factors that are likely to influence breast cancer screening in Ghana. A quantitative research was conducted among women at the Madina market, a Sub Metro within Accra Metropolitan area. Using non- probability sampling, a total of 300 respondents, made up of women from 18 years and above were contacted. A closed ended self-administered questionnaires were used to collect information on demographics, personal, immediate and wider environmental influences, and finally breast cancer screening behaviour. Finally, Pearson‘s correlation test was used to analyse the data collected.
This study has contributed to new knowledge of breast cancer epidemiology in Ghanaian women. Immediate environmental factors, wider external environmental factors and personal characteristics were identified as having significant relationship with breast screening behaviour. This study revealed that the factors which influenced breast cancer screening among Ghanaian women included immediate environmental factors, wider external factors as well as personal characteristics. Further investigations are recommended, probably to replicate similar research in other countries in Africa and India which may share common characteristics with Ghana. Again, future research should focus on qualitative research since this study adopted quantitative approach.
