Preventive Behaviours toward Breast Cancer among Women in Rivers East Senatorial District

Abstract

Breast cancer cases have been on the increase partly due to lifestyles. However, some women have little or no knowledge of the measures that can be carried out to prevent a surge in cases. This study investigated the preventive behaviour toward breast cancer among women in Rivers East Senatorial District. The descriptive cross-sectional research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study consisted of all 545,056 women in Rivers East Senatorial District with a sample size of 1,200 women determined using the Taro Yamane’s formula and selected using the multistage sampling procedure. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire with a reliability coefficient of 0.704 and analysed using mean, standard deviation (SD) and regression statistics at 0.05 alpha level. The finding of the study showed a good preventive behaviour towards breast cancer (X ̅ = 3.00±0.99). Preventive behaviour towards breast cancer was not significantly related to occupation (r = 0.014; p>0.05). It was concluded that women in Rivers East Senatorial District have good preventive behaviour towards breast cancer. It was recommended that, the government should provide special centre for breast cancer counselling at strategic positions where women can easily go to obtain information they may need about their breasts including cancer.