Is a Brief Online Booklet Sufficient to Reduce Fear of Cancer Recurrence or Progression in Women With Ovarian Cancer?
Open accessAbstract
Background: Fear of cancer recurrence or progression (FCR/P) is a common challenge experienced by people living with and beyond cancer and is frequently endorsed as the highest unmet psychosocial need amongst survivors. This has prompted many cancer organizations to develop self-help resources for survivors to better manage these fears through psychoeducation, but little is known about whether they help reduce FCR/P. Method: We recruited 62 women with ovarian cancer. Women reported on their medical history and demographic characteristics and completed the Fear of Progression Questionnaire-Short Form (FoP-Q-SF). They then read a booklet on FCR specifically created for Ovarian Cancer Australia by two of the authors (ABS and PB). One week after reading the booklet, 50/62 women (81%) completed the FoP-Q-SF and answered questions about their satisfaction with the booklet. Results: More than half of the women (35/62; 56.5%) scored in the clinical range for FCR/P at baseline. Of the completers, 93% said that they would recommend the booklet to other women. Satisfaction with the booklet was relatively high (75.3/100) and more than two-thirds of women rated it as moderately helpful or better. However, FCR/P did not change significantly over the week following reading the booklet [t(49) = 1.71, p = 0.09]. There was also no difference in change in FCR/P between women in the clinical vs. non-clinical range on the FoP-Q. Women high in FCR/P rated the booklet as less helpful in managing FCR/P (r = −0.316, p = 0.03), but overall satisfaction with the booklet was not associated with degree of FCR/P (r = −0.24, p = 0.10). Conclusions: These results suggest that a simple online FCR booklet is acceptable to women with ovarian cancer and they are satisfied with the booklet, but, it was insufficient to change in FCR/P levels. These results suggest that such resources are valued by women with ovarian cancer, but more potent interventions are necessary to reduce FCR in this population.
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The duration of the interventions reviewed ranged from a one-off reading of an online psychoeducational booklet with a follow-up one week later to a 16-week program.
“The duration of the interventions reviewed ranged from a one-ff reading an online psychoeducational booklet with a follow-up one week later [54] to a 16-week program [42, 33].”
From Web-based interventions for fear of cancer recurrence: A scoping review with a focus on suggestions for the development and evaluation of future interventions (2024) · cites this paper as [54]
The Method (Design and Procedure) describes access to an online psychoeducational booklet and a follow-up questionnaire one week later, supporting the part attributed to this source. The Discussion (Study Limitations) says the authors did not know how much participants read or how often they used the booklet, so it does not establish a one-off reading. The 16-week program is attributed to other citations in the citing sentence. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredPradhan et al.'s e-booklet, based on the Conquerfear program, did not significantly improve levels of FCR in women with ovarian cancer.
“Pradhan et al.’s e-booklet [54], based on the Conquerfear program [67], did not significantly improve levels of FCR in women with ovarian cancer.”
Ten reviewed interventions were entirely self-guided.
“10 interventions were entirely self-guided. [33, 35, 36, 39–41, 47, 51, 54, 55].”
Being referred onto trial by treatment team was the most frequent recruitment strategy, followed by social media, cancer patient organisations, reviewing medical records, posters, and leaflets.
“Being referred onto trial by treatment team [33, 45, 55, 59, 67] was the most frequent employed strategy, followed by recruiting participants via social media [46, 55, 56, 61], cancer patient organisations [46, 54, 55, 61], reviewing medical records [57, 58, 60], exhibiting posters [46, 67], disseminating a leaflets [55].”
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- Authors
- Pradhan, P., Sharpe, L., Butow, P. N., Smith, A. B., & Russell, H.
- Affiliations
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- UNSW Sydney (AU)
- Ovarian Cancer Australia (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Sharpe, Louise
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2021-02-25
- Volume
- 12
- Pages
- 634136-634136
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7947198
- OpenAlex
- W3131321318
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 0.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Cancer survivorship and care
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Reproductive Medicine › Ovarian cancer diagnosis and treatment
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Childhood Cancer Survivors' Quality of Life
- Keywords
- fear of cancer recurrence, fear of progression, ovarian cancer, cancer survivors, psychoeducation, self-help booklet, online intervention, psychosocial needs, treatment acceptability, women
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