We are happy to announce that Hadar Shtern Salem had successfully defended her project “Views of Personal Genetics Testing and the Effect of Cancer Statistics”, co-advised by Dr. Eran Toch and Prof. Noam Shomron. The work analyzes the effect of presenting information about cancer about the motivation to go through personal genetics testing.

The study made use of an online survey of 388 participants was conducted to assess beliefs and views of personal genetics testing, genetics databases, privacy, and anxiety attributes. During the survey, half of the participants were randomly exposed to a news article about cancer incidence in Israel.

Multiple Linear Regression analysis was executed with Genetic Sequencing Motivation scores as the dependent variable; Privacy Perception, Anxiety, exposure to cancer news articles, and participation in genomics course were referred to as independent variables; gender, age group, education level, parenthood, and medical history were referred as control variables.

Surprisingly, the exposure to a news article about cancer incidence decreased the motivation to go through PGT. In addition, it was found that the high perceived importance of privacy in the context of personal genetic data had been reduced PGT motivation.