Effective Use of Media Awareness Campaigns for Breast Cancer Care among Women: A Comparative Study

This study investigated the influence of media awareness campaigns on breast cancer care among women in South-West Nigeria. This study employed a mixed research method, which made use of survey and focus group discussion to achieve the objectives of the study. For the sample size, a total of 632 persons participated in the study, which was made up of 600 questionnaire respondents and 32 discussants for the focus group discussion. The multi- stage sampling and simple random sampling techniques were used to select the questionnaire respondents in Lagos, Oyo and Ekiti States. Also, three hypotheses were tested using cross tabulation and one-way ANOVA to determine the differences or variance in data that exist among states. This was further tested with Scheffe Post Hoc to determine where the difference(s) lie. The first hypothesis confirmed that there is a significant difference in the level of knowledge about breast cancer among women in Lagos, Oyo and Ekiti States (F ratio =3.026; p<0.05). The second hypothesis showed there is no significant difference in the level of exposure of women in Lagos, Oyo and Ekiti States to media information on breast cancer care (F ratio =.044; p>0.05). The third hypothesis indicated that there is a significant difference in the sources of awareness among women in Lagos, Oyo and Ekiti States (F ratio =16.523; p<0.05). It was suggested that mass media messages be included as the main mechanism to improving breast cancer care among women