Methods
A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design with a control
group was conducted in the neighborhood of Santa
Marı´a Ahuacatitla´n, Morelos, from October 2010 to March
2011 with women between 25 and 40 years of age. This
neighborhood was selected because this study is part of an
educational practicum with public health students of the
Mexican National Institute of Public Health [31]. The size
of the sample was estimated based on findings in a previous
study [20], with the expectation of detecting average scores
of 4.5 and 3.6 (intervention and control groups, respectively)
on the Cervical Cancer Screening Self-efficacy
Scale [27], obtaining a power of 80 %, the same standard
deviation and a ratio of 1:2 between intervention and
control. Thus, groups were calculated of 15 women for the
intervention group and 30 for the control group. The participants
were selected at random from the total of women
in the community between 25 and 40 years of age; verbal
informed consent was provided before participating.
For pre and post evaluation, a questionnaire regarding
knowledge about CUC, the human papilloma virus (HPV)
and the Pap was designed and administered to all the
participants. It involved highlighting the less well-known
topics through the intervention; using the Cervical Cancer
Screening Self-efficacy Scale [27] (Spanish version) to
measure changes related to self-efficacy; conducting a
semi-structured interview to identify the experience eachwoman has had with the pap test, explore the subjective
norm related to the woman undergoing a Pap and identify
individually perceived barriers to undergoing it; and using
free-lists to identify the cultural domain of the participants
regarding the Pap test’s usefulness and facilitators and
barriers to obtaining it. In addition, each woman was asked
about demographic data in order to obtain a profile for each
group. Both the intervention group and the control group
were pre and post evaluated using these instruments. After
the post-test was administered, the intervention was offered
to the control group. This study was approved and supervised
by the faculty at the Mexican National Institute of
Public Health, based on Mexican legislation regarding
research with human subjects [32].