Abstract
Conflicting recommendations about mammography screening have received ample media coverage, emphasizing scientists’ debate over the value of breast cancer screening and differences in professional organizations’ guidelines about the appropriate starting age and frequency of routine mammograms. Whereas past research suggests that exposure to such media coverage of conflicting recommendations can have undesirable consequences, both on topic-specific (e.g., ambivalence about mammography) and more general outcomes (e.g., backlash toward cancer prevention recommendations), experimental evidence, especially for effects on more general health cognitions, is limited. Using data from a population-based sample of U.S. women aged 35–55 years (N = 1467), the current study experimentally tested whether exposure to news stories that varied in the level of conflict about mammography (no, low, medium, and high conflict) affected three general health cognitions—cancer information overload (CIO), perceived scientists’ credibility, and perceived journalists’ credibility. We further tested whether these effects varied by research literacy. Results showed that exposure to conflict increased women’s perceived CIO and reduced their perceptions of journalists’ credibility, and that these effects tapered off at higher levels of conflict. Exposure to conflict also reduced perceptions of scientists’ credibility, but only among participants with lower levels of research literacy. Directions for future research and implications for mitigating these potentially adverse effects on public health are discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2481-2490 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Health communication |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Research literacy was assessed using three items. We borrowed the first item from the Science and Engineering Indicators report series sponsored by the National Science Foundation: “When you read or hear the term scientific study, do you have a clear understanding of what it means, a general sense of what it means, or little understanding of what it means?” (National Science Board, ). To more fully capture the concept, the perceived sense of understanding was also assessed for another two terms: clinical trials (or randomized controlled trials) and cause-and-effect relationships (as opposed to associations), adapted from Nagler (). Response options include 1 (little understanding), 2 (general sense), and 3 (clear understanding). Items were averaged to create a research literacy scale (range = 1.00–3.00, M = 2.15, SD = .59), which demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .84).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
