Facilitating at-Home Colorectal Screening: The Effect of Cognitive and Motivational Instruction Features on User Perceptions and Intentions

Abstract

Fecal Occult Blood Tests (FOBT), which screen for colorectal disease, like other medical at-home testing procedures require users to follow complex instructions that need to be executed carefully for valid results. If instructions are difficult to understand, they may hamper health behavior engagement. This paper describes two experiments that tested the influence of human factors engineering guidelines and motivational instruction features on user perceptions and intentions. Results show that instructional features influenced both user perceptions and intentions. In Experiment 1 the motivational enhancement increased intentions for screening among college students. In Experiment 2, which included the targeted FOBT population (adults over 50), the combination of human factors guidelines and motivational features maximally increased requests for FOBT screening kits. By improving these features we may be able to facilitate FOBT screening and increase compliance rates.