A study looking at attitudes to health and bowel screening in Scotland (ARTICS)

The team found there were mental and emotional factors that influenced people’s intention on doing and returning the bowel screening test. However anticipated regret did not increase the number of test kits returned.

Study design 

Everyone received the standard letter about FOBT. With the standard letter the team sent out 2 questionnaires to some of the people. 

One was the health locus of control (HLOC) questionnaire. The questions asked their beliefs about:

• screening
• control of their health

The other was about the possible regret of not having done the screening test. This is the anticipated regret (AR) questionnaire.

There were 3 groups: 

• 19,797 didn’t get any questionnaires. This was the control group .  
• 20,040 people received the HLOC questionnaire
• 20,163 people received both the HLOC and AR questionnaires

Results
The team looked at whether people intended to do and return the test. 

Of the 19,797 people in the control group 19,604 returned the test. 

Of the 20,040 people who received the HLOC questionnaire 19,828 returned the test and the questionnaire. 

Of the 20,163 people who received both questionnaires 19,934 returned the test and both questionnaires. 

The team looked at the answers to the AR questionnaire. They found that anticipated regret didn’t directly affect people’s intention to do and return the test. 
 
Part of the questionnaire asked the people if they felt any disgust about doing the test. The team looked at whether this affected their intention to do the test. 

They found that the level of disgust people felt did affect their intention to do the test. The team said that this supported previous evidence that disgust was a major barrier to bowel screening. 

Conclusion
Anticipating regret about not participating did not increase the number of test kits returned. However, anticipated regret and disgust were important factors. These indirectly affected the number of people who did the bowel screening test. 

The researchers said that anticipated regret might be a good way to get people to do something. However the method they used in the study was not effective. The team suggested that further work should be done. This could look at different methods of using anticipated regret to increase the number of people who do and return the FIT test. 

More detailed information
There is more information about this research in the reference below. 

Please note, this article is not in plain English. It has been written for health care professionals and researchers.

Journal articles
Anticipated regret to increase uptake of colorectal cancer screening
(ARTICS): A randomised controlled trial

R E O’Carroll, J A Chambers, L Brownlee, G Libby, R J C Steele

Social Science and Medicine, 2015. volume 142, pages 118-127
 
Where this information comes from    

We have based this summary on the information in the article above. This has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed ) and published in a medical journal. We have not analysed the data ourselves. As far as we are aware, the link we list above is active and the article is free and available to view.