Patient Interview

Data were collected during an in-person or telephone interview in the period between surgical consult and surgery. Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics were obtained during the study interview and from the patient medical record. Perceived risk was measured with the Perceived Risk Questionnaire (PRQ), which was developed to assess risk perceptions in patients with DCIS and early-stage breast cancer.[19,4] Our version of the PRQ contained 12 questions asking women to estimate their risk of breast cancer in the same breast, elsewhere in their body, or in their other breast in the next 10 years and in their lifetime. Questions were asked using a response scale from 0 to 100, where 0=certain not to happen and 100=certain to happen. To better understand how women evaluate and report risk, the interviewer asked each woman to explain how she arrived at her response for each of the 12 questions. Interviews were audio recorded and lasted approximately 40 minutes.