IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v51y2000i12p1805-1816.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From "reducing" to "coping with" uncertainty: reconceptualizing the central challenge in breast self-exams

Author

Listed:
  • Babrow, Austin S.
  • Kline, Kimberly N.

Abstract

An ideology of uncertainty reduction pervades scholarly and popular discourse on breast self-exams (BSE). Women are encouraged to understand BSE as an activity that reduces uncertainty about their health. Moreover, uncertainties about the procedure itself are conceived as barriers to BSE. In turn, reducing these uncertainties is seen as the key to promoting BSE. We argue that the ideology of uncertainty reduction is both descriptively and prescriptively inadequate and potentially a threat to women's health. We further contend the ideology should be replaced by a framework that illuminates processes of coping with uncertainty. Several major characteristics of such a framework, as well as implications for medical practice, are discussed and illustrated within the context of BSE.

Suggested Citation

  • Babrow, Austin S. & Kline, Kimberly N., 2000. "From "reducing" to "coping with" uncertainty: reconceptualizing the central challenge in breast self-exams," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(12), pages 1805-1816, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:12:p:1805-1816
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(00)00112-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lynsey Romo, 2014. "“These Aren’t Very Good Times”: Financial Uncertainty Experienced by Romantic Partners in the Wake of an Economic Downturn," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 35(4), pages 477-488, December.
    2. Schreurs, Bert & van Emmerik, IJ. Hetty & Guenter, Hannes & Germeys, Filip, 2011. "A Weekly Diary Study on the Buffering Role of Social Support in the Relationship between Job Insecurity and Employee Performance," Working Papers 2011/27, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    3. Jerry Selvaseelan, 2018. "Development and Introduction of the Risk-Sentience Auxiliary Framework (RSAF) as an Enabler to the ISO 31000 and ISO 31010 for High-Risk Environments," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-22, June.
    4. Dean, Marleah, 2016. "“It’s not if I get cancer, it’s when I get cancer”: BRCA-positive patients’ (un)certain health experiences regarding hereditary breast and ovarian cancer risk," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 21-27.
    5. Scherr, Courtney L. & Getachew-Smith, Hannah J. & Sudec, Laura & Brooks, John J. & Roberts, Megan, 2020. "Parents’ sensemaking processes in the identification of developmental delays and engagement with early intervention services," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    6. Kielmann, Karina & Deshmukh, Deepali & Deshpande, Sucheta & Datye, Vinita & Porter, John & Rangan, Sheela, 2005. "Managing uncertainty around HIV/AIDS in an urban setting: Private medical providers and their patients in Pune, India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(7), pages 1540-1550, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:12:p:1805-1816. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.