Awareness about breast cancer risk factor and breast self-examination among female students at Taif university

The aim of this research is to determine the level of understanding of risk factors, signs symptoms, and breast self-examination for breast cancer. A cross-sectional survey was used by female students at Taif university in Saudi Arabia. The target demographic was female undergraduate students aged between 18–25. The data collection was performed using an online questionnaire between January 2020 and February 2020. The questionnaire consisted of three sections: demographic details of the participants, knowledge of and experience of BSE and knowledge of breast cancer, its risk factors, and information source. Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and chi-square research carried out by Pearson. The result of this study indicates that participants who knew the proper way to self-examine the breast were (56.9%), while (43.1%) did not. The majority of the sample (77%) did not do breast self-examination, the highest reason was that they didn’t know the way (29.6%), while (28.8%) didn’t care. (75.5%) thought that the best time for a breast self-examination was 5 days after menstruation ended. Knowledge of risk factors; the family history factor was the highest (72.2%) and incomplete pregnancy period was the lowest (85.6%). The major source of being informed about breast cancer was awareness campaigns (55.23%), followed by social media (51.67%). From the previous results we concluded that knowledge about BSE was relatively good, while breast cancer risk factor awareness was relatively low, so increasing the awareness through social media and awareness campaigns is essential for early detection and treatment of breast cancer.