Evaluating the Shared Decision Making Process Scale in Cancer Screening Decisions

This is a retrospective observational study that will examine the performance of the Shared Decision Making Process in a sample of patients who made a decision about cancer screening in the last 2 years. Patients from 4 hospitals who have received a patient decision aid for breast, colon, prostate, or lung cancer screening will be screened for eligibility. A random sample of eligible patients will be sent a one-time survey. The survey asks patients about their experiences talking with healthcare providers about the specific cancer screening decision. The survey includes the Shared Decision Making Process scale, knowledge, preferences, decisional conflict and decision regret. The study will obtain 400 completed surveys, or 100 for each cancer topic.

The sample consists of patients who received a decision aid for cancer screening within the last two years and meet specific qualifications.

All analyses will be conducted separately for each group, and results may be pooled. First, study staff examine the descriptives for the Shared Decision Making Process items. Study staff will also test several hypotheses to examine performance of the scores such as whether higher shared decision making process scores are associated with less decisional conflict and less regret.