Quality of Life and Colorectal Cancer Screening Behaviors - MIMIC model analysis

Quality of life (QOL) measures are often used to assess the effectiveness of cancer screening intervention programs in older adults. The major weakness in QOL use is that it is difficult to determine whether or not a high QOL score is associated with the improvement of the targeted cancer screening behaviors. There is evidence for the association between QOL and cancer screening behaviors. However, their interrelationships have received little investigation. The purpose of this study is to examine the associations of two latent variables (QOL and colorectal cancer screening behaviors (COLC)). Data were derived from a national representative sample of 32,841 aged 50 to 84 years from the National Health Interview Survey 2010. The QOL and the COLC were developed in the NHIS cancer file. Confirmatory factor analysis with multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model on the M-plus were used for data analysis. Most of the participants were Caucasian (68%) male (80%) who were married or live together (83%). The results revealed that COLC was weakly associated with QOL (β =.06, p< .05). Alternatively, the robust associations were observed in several demographic variables. Married or living together (β=.12, p <.05), having a usual source of care (β=.18, p <.01) and non-Hispanic (β=.16, p <.01) were associated with COLC. Non- Hispanic was also weakly associated with QOL (β=.07, p <.05). These findings indicated that QOL may not be strongly associated with COLC. The importance of the interpretation in QOL use of the colorectal cancer screening programs will be discussed.