Measuring Fear Of Cancer: The Fear Of Cancer Index

Fear of cancer appears to play an important role in cancer knowledge, health beliefs and health seeking behavior. There are few measures of fear of cancer in the literature. In this article, we present a new fear of cancer measure, the Fear of Cancer Index (FCI). The FCI is a symptom associated measure. It assesses fear of cancer in an indirect manner; therefore, it is less susceptible to anxiety and bias. Fear of cancer was strongly related to psychological distress and several other measures. Implications for health research and health education are discussed. We also discuss measuring fear of cancer in toxic hazard situations.