COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF RECALLING AND REPORTING HEALTH-RELATED EVENTS - PAPANICOLAOU SMEARS, CLINICAL BREAST EXAMINATIONS, AND MAMMOGRAMS

This paper reports an examination of cognitive processes used by 178 w omen aged 50 years and older in retrieving information about the frequ ency with which they received Papanicolaou smears, mammograms, and cli nical breast examinations, Women were selected from a health maintenan ce organization in which they had been enrolled for at least 51/2 year s, The literature suggested that reporting of regular events such as t hese kinds of tests is likely to be based on schemas, which is an esti mation technique in which events are reported in a format with generic content, Thus, if the procedure is believed to occur annually, the re spondent will report receiving five tests in 5 years, The study attemp ted to evaluate whether use of episodic recall, in which respondents a re forced to report individual events, would be more accurate than rep orts based on estimation using a schema format, The results indicated that most of the errors occurred in Papanicolaou smear reporting, whic h is consistent with the literature, and that the fewest errors occurr ed with mammograms. Regardless of the questionnaire format, respondent s persisted in using schemas based on the date of annual physical exam ination, Most reporting errors occurred because the interval between e xaminations was estimated incorrectly.