Background: In cancer prevention, where risk factors and screening guidelines are often changing, conflicting information presents a significant challenge for the promotion of preventive behaviors. The link between conflicting information and individual behavior is mediated by relevant health cognitions and it is at this juncture where cancer prevention communication efforts are typically targeted. This study seeks to understand the relationship between two types of perceived conflict in health expert recommendations and personal and general cancer prevention-related cognitions.
Methods: Through the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 6 (2022), a nationally representative sample of US adults (N=6,252) rated perceptions of two types of conflict in health expert recommendations: contemporaneous (i.e., contradictory at a single time point) and temporal (i.e., changing over time) (dichotomized: often/very often, never/rarely). Two items assessed personal cognitions related to cancer prevention: perceived cancer risk and cancer worry. Three items assessed general cognitions: cancer fatalism (i.e., everything causes cancer, there’s not much you can do to prevent it) and confusion (i.e., it is difficult to know which recommendations to follow). Weighted logistic regression models examined associations between each type of perceived conflict and each health cognition separately, adjusting for age, birth sex, race/ethnicity, income, health numeracy, digital health literacy, and cancer experience (survivor, family history, caregiver).
Results: Perceiving contemporaneous, but not temporal, conflict often/very often (versus never/rarely) was associated with higher odds of believing that everything causes cancer (aOR=1.49, p=.01) and believing that there are so many recommendations about preventing cancer (aOR=1.33, p=.03). Perceived cancer risk, cancer worry, and the belief that there’s not much you can do to prevent cancer were not associated with either type of perceived conflict.
Conclusion: Perceived contemporaneous conflict, but not temporal conflict, is related to higher odds of fatalism in cancer causes and confusion in cancer recommendations, suggesting that contemporaneous conflict may have more negative effects. Perceived conflict is also associated with general, as opposed to personal, cancer cognitions. Future work should evaluate strategies to mitigate the potentially harmful consequences of conflicting information on cancer prevention.