Decision support for colorectal cancer prevention - what is the best way to present access to online information: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) targeted to age and gender or a generic information topic list?

Pre-intervention: All participants logged on to a website from a location most convenient for them, using a personally-allocated ID, and completed a single-session baseline survey that took approximately 15 minutes to complete. The primary dependent measure collected was readiness to act on perceived personal colorectal cancer risk. Two weeks later following completion of the baseline survey, participants logged on again to the website from a convenient location. Participants were randomized to 1 of 4 groups, 3 intervention arms and one control, using pre-allocated ID numbers that had previously been block randomised. A computer algorithm restricted the availability of each website to the prescribed cohort, dependent upon the ID entered. Each intervention comprised a single website session lasting approximately 30 minutes (dependent upon the time taken by the participant to review the information presented). Intervention: A description of each intervention follows: Arm 1: FAQs: The FAQs website opened with a page entitled “Prevention of Bowel Cancer” and provided 6 icons that could be clicked on to “Get answers to some of the most Frequently Asked Questions by people in certain age groups”. Each icon included a picture of a man or woman selected to be representative of the age group together with words identifying gender and age (e.g., “I am a woman aged 35–49”). Clicking on the icon took the participant to a page that provided a further link to information to satisfy the top information needs of this group as previously identified . This page started with the “five most frequently asked questions” for the specified cohort and associated links to answers and was followed below by links to “OTHER questions asked…” This latter set of questions was also ordered by order of importance as identified . Arm 2: The LIST website was also entitled “Prevention of Bowel Cancer”. It was followed by the statement, “The information I want about bowel cancer is…” and a list of 10 links ordered according to the chronology of cancer diagnosis and treatment, with the exception of prevention being included at the end. Arm 3: The CHOICE website included both the LIST of information links and the FAQs icons on the initial page with the instruction “Get answers to some of the most Frequently Asked Questions by people in certain age groups, or view a list of categories of information about bowel cancer”. The location of the icons and the list was balanced so that half of CHOICE respondents viewed the icons on the right side of the screen and the list on the left, whereas the other half viewed the reverse order. Once a selection had been made, participants were treated as though they were assigned to the FAQs or LIST condition.