“What can be done to avoid cancer” in the students’ mind
“What can be done to avoid cancer” in the students’ mind

Summary/Abstract: Cancer is one of the most known and impressive diseases. It is considered by the largest partof the population as the most frightening disease. It is also strongly associated with death inpeople mind (Guilbert 2005). Otherwise, the question of the factors responsible for cancersis still under debate. In student population, the representations of cancer have been poorlyexplored. It is very intriguing to know the representations of young pupils about cancerbecause this topic is almost not treated, at least in France, in all school levels until sciencespecialized year 12.In previous studies, we found that cancer is the disease the most present in young pupils’mind and the most associated with death (Malpel et al. 2016).In this study we explore the representations of students, more specifically about “what canbe done to avoid cancer”, using questionnaires, considering age and gender as influencingfactors.Our results indicate a large variety of representations in relation to different variables: namely the academic level and the gender. This latter aspect is interesting regarding the well known different relation of adult men and women to the disease (Salle, Vidal, 2017). Moreover, we found that all students’ answers can be categorized into “what should be done”, “what should not be done” and “there is nothing to do”. In the second category, our results indicate that the relative importance of individual dependent factors versus environmental factors change according to the age of students. Attention to the environmental factors becomes more important in older students’ mind to avoid cancer.

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