What health policy makers need to know about mismatches between public perceptions of disease risk, prevalence and severity: a national survey

Abstract

Objectives

The aim of this study was to assess people’s perceptions of their personal risk, population prevalence and perceived severity in relation to three key health conditions (cancer, heart disease and hearing loss), gauge the size of any misperceptions, and identify correlates of such misperceptions.

Design

This study was a cross-sectional survey.

Study sample

A total of 10,401 adults representative of the UK population were participated in the study.

Results

Clear majorities of people incorrectly believe that they are at greater personal risk of cancer (>75%), that cancer is more prevalent in the population (>50%) and that cancer is more disabling (>65%), than either heart disease or hearing loss. In turn, people consistently regard their personal risk of hearing loss, the population prevalence of hearing loss and the severity of hearing loss as lower than either cancer or heart disease. Multiple regression analyses showed inconsistent patterns of relationships between people’s beliefs, sociodemographic characteristics and their health behaviours.

Conclusions

Accuracy in beliefs about cancer, heart disease and hearing loss is low, and the relationships between these beliefs, their potential antecedents and consequences are complex. Policy makers should ensure close adherence to evidence or risk-making decisions that are costly both in financial terms and in terms of suboptimal population subjective well-being.

Keywords:

• Risk
• perceptions
• public opinions
• health policy

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Cath Wright and Kate Gosschalk for their help with approvals and data collection. Armitage was additionally supported by the NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was obtained from a University Research Ethics Committee (protocol no. 2019-5769-9246).

Informed consent

The participants gave informed consent at the beginning of the survey.

Consent for publication

No patient-identifying personal information was collected.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the planning of the study. The analysis was conducted by CJA. The initial draft of the article was written by CJA and KJM. All authors revised the manuscript, and approved the final version for publication. CJA is the guarantor. CJA affirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study reported; no important aspects of the study have been omitted.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Data availability statement

Data and materials on reasonable request will be available 1 year following publication from CJA.

Additional information

Funding

The study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Manchester Biomedical Research Centre https://www.manchesterbrc.nihr.ac.uk/ [grant number BRC-1215-20007] that was awarded to CJA and KJM. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of NIHR.