Associate Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences
psychosocial predictors of well being in rural breast cancer survivors
Steven Westgate, M.D. and Jane Armer, Ph.D. RN
National Cancer Institute
Researchers have largely ignored rural women's psychological adjustment to breast cancer, focusing almost exclusively on urban women’s experiences. The Women’s Wellness Project aims to answer the key question, "Which particular social-relational and individual-difference variables are likely to be important for understanding psychological adjustment among rural women surviving breast cancer?" The WWP is conducting a study that includes a quantitative survey of a sample of 120 rural women being treated for breast cancer, along with a comparison sample of 120 urban women. The survey includes measures of social-relational, individual-difference, and psychological adjustment variables. Moreover, as means for providing an understanding of the ways in which the influences of these variables change over time, multiple surveys are administered to participants over the course of radiation therapy and for the subsequent 9 months.
Previous research from the Women’s Wellness Project has examined the associations between health locus of control, coping styles, and psychological adjustment in a sample of rural breast cancer patients and an urban comparison sample. Although the results showed that both rural and urban breast cancer patients reported similar levels on most of the individual differences variables under investigation, there were differences, depending on residence, in the relationships between external and internal health locus of control beliefs, fatalism, avoidant, and optimistic coping and the main outcome variable, psychological adjustment. Finally, for both rural and urban breast cancer patients, low levels of religious coping and high levels of hopeless/helpless and anxious coping were associated with worse psychological adjustment.