Perception of breast cancer risk and determinants of screening behaviors among female undergraduate students at a Nigerian private university

Background: This study assessed perceived risk, breast cancer knowledge, screening attitudes and determinants of screening practices among students at Bowen University, Iwo, Nigeria. Methods: A cross-sectional design was employed, and a multistage sampling method used to recruit 400 eligible respondents after obtaining ethical approval for the study. A pre-tested, self-administered, and semi-structured questionnaire was used for data collection between May and July 2022. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS Statistics, version 25). The primary study outcomes were respondents’ knowledge of breast cancer, attitude to breast cancer screening and screening practices. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were carried out at p<0.05. Results: The mean age (±SD) of respondents was 20 ± 6.9 years, 49.0% of them were adolescents aged 15-19 years. Breast cancer risk perception rate was low (1.2%) among respondents, less than three-quarter (70.0%) possessed good knowledge of breast cancer but 82.3% of them had positive attitude towards screening while only 28.8% had ever screened. Determinants of breast cancer screening uptakes were respondents’ age (AOR=0.30; 95%CI=0.186-0.475), length of stay in school (AOR=0.42; 95%CI=0.266-0.646), family history of breast cancer (AOR=0.29; 95%CI=0.140-0.585) and attitude to screening (AOR=2.1; 95% CI=1.075-3.909). Conclusion: Despite high breast cancer awareness, relatively good knowledge and positive screening attitude, risk perception and screening uptake were low among the respondents. Policy makers should design cost-effective breast cancer awareness campaigns, to correct the low-risk perception among female university students in Nigerian and improve screening practices through BSE among them.