Effectiveness of a theory-based educational intervention on breast self-exam behavior in women who referred to health care centers

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a theory-based educational intervention on women's breast self-examination behavior.
This was a semi-experimental study on sample of women referring to health care centers in southern Tehran in 2017. Simple random sampling was applied and 47 women assigned to intervention group and 47 women assigned to control group. The intervention group received 4 educational sessions each lasting for 45 minutes. Pre- and post-intervention data were collected by a self-designed questionnaire based on the Health Belief Model constructs. For statistical analysis, chi-square, paired t-test, independent t-test, McNemar and Wilcoxon tests were used. Data was analyzed using SPSS ver. 23.
The mean scores of all constructs of health belief model, with the exception of the perceived benefits in the experimental group, were significantly better than the control group.
The results of this study showed that the educational intervention based on health belief model has could influence breast self-examination behavior in women.