Assessment of Public Awareness of Screenable Cancers in Northern Iran: A Cross-sectional Survey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Cancer represents a significant challenge to society, public health, and the economy in the 21st century, accounting for nearly a quarter of all deaths caused by noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) globally. Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the level of cancer awareness among residents of Guilan, Iran, with particular attention to breast cancer (BC), prostate cancer (PC), cervical cancer (CC), and colorectal cancer (CRC). Methods: This study was conducted as a cross-sectional study. A total of 2304 individuals aged 30 to 80 were randomly selected from the telephone directory and interviewed between January 28, 2017, and January 28, 2019. After excluding 803 (31.43%) participants due to incomplete responses, the final analysis included 1,501 participants. The sample size was calculated based on a previous similar study. A validated questionnaire was used to evaluate their knowledge of risk factors, symptoms, and screening methods for cancers that can be screened. To address potential bias, random digit dialing was employed, and trained interviewers used a validated questionnaire. Statistical analysis was done with SPSS for Windows, version 16.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA), and plots were depicted using GraphPad Prism, Version 8.0.1 (GraphPad Prism Software Inc., San Diego, CA, USA). A P-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The mean age of the participants was 43.08 (SD = 12.53) and 50% were male. Most participants were employed (82.7%), married (73.8%), university-educated (34.9%) and urban residents (62.5%). About 573 (38.2%), 492 (32.8%), and 446 (29.7%) of participants had a good level of awareness in general, nutritional risk factors and signs/symptoms fields, respectively. There was a statistically significant association between gender and awareness scores in all three areas (P < 0.05), with notable gender differences in PC awareness (P = 0.006). Employed participants had significantly higher awareness of cervical (P = 0.01) and CRC (P = 0.04) than unemployed participants. Higher education was strongly linked to greater awareness for all four cancers (P = 0.001 for each). Additionally, higher Body Mass Index (BMI) was associated with better awareness of CRC (P = 0.01). Conclusions: These findings show the importance of targeted educational interventions, especially for men, the unemployed, less-educated, and urban populations, to enhance cancer awareness and support early detection and prevention efforts. However, this study has limitations, including its cross-sectional design, which prevents causal inference, and the use of telephone interviews, which may have excluded individuals without landline access. Future studies should include more diverse sampling methods to improve generalizability.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".