Abstract
BackgroundOnly few studies have integrated breast cancer screening, lifestyle, and quality of life. Potential bias due to selective non-response may disrupt associations being investigated. We describe the design of a Finnish population-based study on associations between breast cancer screening and various indicators for lifestyle and quality of life, and evaluate the level of bias among the respondents from the first study rounds over 2 years.MethodsThe study target population of 10 000, 49-year-old women was randomly drawn from the Finnish National Population Registry. The data included birth year, marital status, municipality, and primary language. Data on education were retrieved from Statistics Finland.Questionnaires focusing on lifestyle-related risk factors and quality of life were sent to the target population in 2012–13, 1 year before the first invitation to organized breast cancer screening.We evaluated associations between willingness to respond and demographic characteristics in the eligible study population. Additionally, we examined associations between the demographic characteristics and the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), and evaluated the impact of non-response using inverse probability weighting and multiple imputation.ResultsThe questionnaire response proportion was 52.4 %. Compared to non-respondents, respondents were more often married, academically educated, and native speakers of Finnish or Swedish. Nevertheless, the estimates of the SWLS among the respondents were in line with those corrected by non-response in the eligible study population.ConclusionsBased on the SWLS, the respondents are representative of women in the entire eligible study population.
Highlights
Few studies have integrated breast cancer screening, lifestyle, and quality of life
We report here the design of the study and assess the overall response, phases of response and the influence of non-response in associations being investigated, using demographic characteristics derived from the Finnish National Population Registry (FNPR) and the Statistics Finland (SF), and a Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) addressed in the study questionnaire
The overall number of respondents as well as the distribution of demographic characteristics was similar in both birth cohorts (IRR 1.02, 95 % CI 0.97–1.08)
Summary
Few studies have integrated breast cancer screening, lifestyle, and quality of life. We describe the design of a Finnish population-based study on associations between breast cancer screening and various indicators for lifestyle and quality of life, and evaluate the level of bias among the respondents from the first study rounds over 2 years. Lifestyle is a major modulator of breast cancer risk, and changes in lifestyle have been shown to affect quality of life [7,8,9,10]. Both desirable and harmful lifestyle changes due to participation to screening have been reported from colorectal and lung cancer screening trials [11]. The results suggest that screening may induce desirable lifestyle changes but may provide false reassurance to continue or to start unhealthy behaviour
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