Examining word association networks: A cross-country comparison of women's perceptions of HPV testing and vaccination

PLoS One. 2017 Oct 5;12(10):e0185669. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185669. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

In this study, we examined the perceptual associations women hold with regard to cervical cancer testing and vaccination across two countries, the U.S. and Australia. In a large-scale online survey, we presented participants with 'trigger' words, and asked them to state sequentially other words that came to mind. We used this data to construct detailed term co-occurrence network graphs, which we analyzed using basic topological ranking techniques. The results showed that women hold divergent perceptual associations regarding trigger words relating to cervical cancer screening tools, i.e. human papillomavirus (HPV) testing and vaccination, which indicate health knowledge deficiencies with non-HPV related associations emerging from the data. This result was found to be consistent across the country groups studied. Our findings are critical in optimizing consumer education and public service announcements to minimize misperceptions relating to HPV testing and vaccination in order to maximize adoption of cervical cancer prevention tools.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Australia
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Middle Aged
  • Papanicolaou Test
  • Papillomavirus Infections / diagnosis*
  • Papillomavirus Infections / prevention & control
  • Papillomavirus Infections / psychology
  • Papillomavirus Vaccines / administration & dosage*
  • United States
  • Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / prevention & control
  • Women's Health*
  • Young Adult

Substances

  • Papillomavirus Vaccines

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.