A Spiritually Based Approach to Breast Cancer Awareness: Cognitive Response Analysis of Communication Effectiveness

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the communication effectiveness of a spiritually based approach to breast cancer early detection education with a secular approach, among African American women, by conducting a cognitive response analysis. A total of 108 women from 6 Alabama churches were randomly assigned by church to receive a spiritually based or secular educational booklet discussing breast cancer early detection. Based on the elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981), after reading the booklets participants were asked to complete a thought-listing task, writing down any thoughts they experienced and rating them as positive, negative, or neutral. Two independent coders then used 5 dimensions to code participants' thoughts. Compared with the secular booklet, the spiritually based booklet resulted in significantly more thoughts involving personal connection, self-assessment, and spiritually based responses. These results suggest that a spiritually based approach to breast cancer awareness may be more effective than the secular approach because it caused women to more actively process the message, stimulating central route processing. The incorporation of spiritually based content into church-based breast cancer education could be a promising health communication approach for African American women.