Cervical Cancer 9
associated with fear, they attempt to control it with denial, avoidance, and/or suppression; thus,
the message will likely be rejected (Witte, 1993; Witte, Cameron, Lapinski, & Nzyuko, 1998b).
This model has had success in predicting the adoption or rejection of health campaign messages
(see Witte et al., 1998b).
While the action of obtaining a pap test and/or the thought of having cervical cancer can
be fear arousing, EPPM posits that the right combination of threat and efficacious messages can
lead to cognitively based danger control processes. Differences in the amount of threat and
efficacious messages can, however, lead to initiation of fear control processes that include
denying susceptibility and/or avoiding obtaining a pap test as a preventive measure. Thus, when
investigating the messages regarding cervical cancer in women’s magazines, it seems
particularly valuable to specifically look for balance among messages relating to severity,
susceptibility, self-efficacy, and response-efficacy. This position is related a second research
question:
RQ2: Are there differences in the amount of severity, susceptibility, self-efficacy, and
response-efficacy messages across the six women’s magazines?
Finally, when deciding on which women’s magazines to analyze, the fact that women of
all ages are potentially at risk for developing cervical cancer and are in need of media coverage
regarding benefits of annual pap testing was taken into consideration. Women of varying ages
have identified barriers such as nervousness, embarrassment, and cited a general desire more
information about pap testing (Burak & Meyer, 1997; Witte, Berkowitz, Cameron, & McKeon,
1998a). In addition, younger women and older women have varying degrees of risk and varying
risk factors. Thus, we chose to analyze three magazines whose readership is ages 18-29, and
three magazines whose readership is ages 25-50 to address a third research question:
Convention