Cancer Awareness in Hertfordshire, Luton and South Bedfordshire

Cancer Awareness in Hertfordshire, Luton and South Bedfordshire4 Awareness of cancer risk factors4.1 Recall of risk factors for cancer (unprompted)Initially, respondents were asked what things they think affect a person’s chance ofgetting cancer. Interviewers were instructed to give respondents time to think abouttheir response and to keep asking if they could think of anything else until therespondent could think of no more risk factors. The following chart provides both thefirst mentioned risk factor and the combined mentions.As might be expected, spontaneous recall of smoking as a risk factor was high (89%),with smoking dominating the top of mind awareness (83% mention this risk first).Other factors recalled by around a third were drinking alcohol (38%), a family history ofcancer (34%) and passive smoking (30%). Spontaneous recall of exposure to the sunas a cancer risk is perhaps a little lower than would be expected, but this could be areflection of the fieldwork timings.20