Cultural Beliefs and Cancer Screening (CBCS) Study

The NCI-R03 study established the psychometric properties of a Chinese-English "Cultural Beliefs and Cancer Screening" (CBCS) questionnaire that measures the full range of concepts derived from prior empirical and promising theoretical work. Guided by culturally-specific adaptations made to the health belief model (HBM) with adaptation of existing instruments when necessary (e.g., Champion's Breast Cancer Screening Scales and Moon's Cultural Affiliation Scale), CBCS questionnaires used culturally appropriate qualitative and quantitative research to evaluate the adequacy of study variables in the CBCS questionnaires as predictors of mammography used among Chinese Americans. Lower utilization of breast cancer screening is probably responsible for a greater proportion of tumors found at a late stage among Chinese American women compared to U.S. white women. The CBCS questionnaire facilitated the development future intervention programs in increasing the the use of mammography screening. The CBCS questionnaire was adopted by several researchers that were interested in using this tool for other minority populations to measure cultural beliefs about cancer and cancer screening practices.