Purpose/objectives: To compare Florida Hispanic and non-Hispanic Caucasian women in their health beliefs about breast cancer and health locus of control (LOC).
Design: Exploratory, comparative.
Setting: A variety of healthcare settings in an urban area in Florida.
Sample: Hispanic (n = 113) and non-Hispanic (n = 197) Caucasian women who could read and understand either English or Spanish.
Methods: The Health Screening Questionnaire, which assesses health beliefs and health LOC, was administered in either Spanish or English, and the results were analyzed.
Main research variables: Attitudes about health in general, perceptions about susceptibility to cancer, beliefs about benefits of early diagnosis, and perceptions about the seriousness of cancer; LOC.
Findings: Florida Hispanic women are better educated than the Mexican American Hispanic women described in the literature. Hispanic and non-Hispanic women were significantly different in their health beliefs and LOC. With age and education controlled statistically, these differences remained. Hispanic women who preferred to speak/read English were more like the non-Hispanic women in their responses than were the women who preferred Spanish.
Conclusions: Cultural differences exist between Hispanic and non-Hispanic women; however, differences also exist between groups of Hispanic women in Florida versus Hispanics in the southwestern United States.
Implications for nursing practice: Outreach programs for cancer screening should be culturally relevant and may need to be different for subgroups of Hispanics in the United States.