Perspectives of international experts and the Danish citizens on the ‘relevant knowledge’ that citizens need for making informed choices about participation in cancer screening: Qualitative study

Sep 28, 2026

This qualitative interview study explores the perspectives of international experts and Danish citizens regarding the “relevant knowledge” needed to make informed decisions about participating in population-based cancer screening. Focus group interviews with eligible experts and citizens used semi-structured guides; recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically. International experts and Danish citizens largely aligned on disease and symptom knowledge, practical screening information, benefits, non-participation options, and numeric outcome information, while they diverged on the relevance of knowledge about screening harms.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

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Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript | | HHS Public Access
Author manuscript
Patient Educ Couns. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2026 January 01. | | --- | --- | Published in final edited form as: Patient Educ Couns. 2025 January ; 130: 108479. doi:10.1016/j.pec.2024.108479 . Perspectives of international experts and the Danish citizens on the ‘relevant knowledge’ that citizens need for making informed choices about participation in cancer screening: Qualitative study Rikke Nicoline Stokholma,b,* , Pia Kirkegaarda,b, Mette Bach Larsenb,c, Henrik Hein Lauridsend, Dawn Staceye, Diane M. Harperf, Karen Sepuchag, Kirsten McCafferyh, Maren Rederi, Michael Pignonej, Mirjam Fransenk,l,m, Robert J. Volkn, Yvonne Wengströmo, Adrian Edwardsa,p, Berit Andersena,b a University Research Clinic for Cancer Screening, Department of Public Health Programmes, Randers Regional Hospital, Randers, Denmark b Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Denmark c Research unit, Horsens Regional Hospital, Denmark d Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark eOttawa Hospital Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Canada fUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA gMassachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA hSydney Health Literacy Lab, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia i Institute of Psychology, University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany This is an open access article under the CC BY license ([http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)). *Correspondence to: University Research Clinic for Cancer Screening, Department of Public Health Programmes Randers Regional Hospital, Skovlyvej 15, DK-8930 Randers, NO, [Denmark. ristok@rm.dk](Denmark. ristok@rm.dk), [au470755@uni.au.dk](au470755@uni.au.dk) (R.N. Stokholm). CRediT authorship contribution statement Rikke Nicoline Stokholm: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Mirjam Fransen: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Michael Pignone: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Maren Reder: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Berit Andersen: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Henrik Hein Lauridsen: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Adrian Edwards: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Mette Bach Larsen: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Yvonne Wengström:¨ Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Pia Kirkegaard: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Robert J. Volk: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Kirsten McCaffery: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Karen Sepucha: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Diane M. Harper: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Dawn Stacey: Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Stokholm et al. Page 2 j Duke University, Department of Medicine, Durham, USA k Department of Public and Occupational Health, Amsterdam University Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands lAmsterd

FAQs

What did the study investigate?

The study examined international experts’ and Danish citizens’ perspectives on the “relevant knowledge” needed for informed choices about participating in cancer screening.

How were data collected and analyzed?

Data came from focus group interviews using semi-structured guides, with audio-recording and verbatim transcription, followed by thematic analysis.

What knowledge areas did experts and citizens agree on?

They agreed on knowledge about disease and symptoms, practical screening information, screening benefits, the option of non-participation, and the importance of numeric information about possible screening outcomes.

Where did the experts and citizens disagree?

They disagreed on the relevance of knowledge about the harms of screening; experts considered this important more often than citizens.

Sep 28, 2026

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