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Trait anxiety, information modality, and responses to communications about prenatal genetic testing

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Abstract

Decisions to undergo invasive prenatal diagnostic procedures can be anxiety provoking. Individuals receive information about these procedures in one of three modalities: written text, audio (verbal description), or video. We examined whether modality influences emotional responses and testing decisions, and whether trait anxiety, a disposition linked with heightened sensitivity to threatening information, moderates these effects. New Zealand adults (N = 176) completed a trait anxiety measure before random allocation to view a text, audio, or video message about amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling. Participants completed measures of child related worry, anticipated emotional distress, anticipated coping efficacy, perceived likelihood of miscarriage, and testing interest. High-anxious individuals reported greater distress and lower coping efficacy in response to the video message compared to the audio message. They also reported greater miscarriage likelihood in response to the video message compared to the text message. These findings suggest that use of video, assumed to be most informative for educating patients, could induce greater distress about prenatal testing in individuals prone to anxiety.

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Notes

  1. Additional regression analyses showed that parenthood did not emerge as a significant predictor of any of the dependent variables, nor did it interact with either trait anxiety or message condition variables to predict these dependent variables.

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Conflict of interest

Authors Cécile Muller and Linda D Cameron declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Public Health Genetics, Genetic Disorder, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Cécile Muller

  2. Psychological Sciences, School of Social Science, Humanities, and the Arts, University of California Merced, Merced, CA, USA

    Linda D. Cameron

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  1. Cécile Muller
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  2. Linda D. Cameron
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Correspondence to Cécile Muller.

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Fig. 6
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Key Shots of the clip used in the video condition

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Muller, C., Cameron, L.D. Trait anxiety, information modality, and responses to communications about prenatal genetic testing. J Behav Med 37, 988–999 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-014-9555-8

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