Team:Duesseldorf/Table
Evaluation of our public survey on cancer, cancer therapy and gene therapy
Participants
Our survey was conducted both, online and offline and reached a total of 308 people. 100 people completed our survey online, 208 people did it offline. Besides answering questions about cancer and gene therapy, the participants were also asked to state their gender, age and educational status. Out of our 308 participants, 146 (47%) were female, 99 (32%) male and 63 (21%) either did not want to state their gender or did not identify as male or female.
The majority of the participants, 284 (82%), were 18-29 years old. 4 (1%) were younger than 18, 5 (1%) were 30-45 years old, 9 (3%) were 46-55 years old, 5 (1%) were 56-65 years old and 6 (2%) were older than 65. 35 (10%) did not state their age.
Most of our participants were well-educated (86%), as 232 (72%) of them had a high-school diploma and 42 (14%) a university degree. 8 (3%) had a lower secondary education and 20 (6%) had a secondary school leaving certificate. 5 (2%) did not state their educational status.
Cancer and cancer therapies
It was of great interest for us to find out how well the public was educated about the almost omnipresent topic cancer. It turns out that most participants, 134 (44%), have a mediocre knowledge about cancer. About one third, 70 (23%), has a good knowledge and 26 (8%) have a very good knowledge. Therefore we can conclude that three fourth of the people have at least a basic knowledge about cancer. Only 67 (22%) of our participants stated that they have little and only 11 (4%) have no knowledge about cancer.
To get more detailed, we also wanted to know which therapy methods against cancer our participants knew. The results were quite good.
The most common therapy methods, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgical therapy, were known to the majority of our participants. We found it to be astonishing that pretty much everyone knew about chemotherapy. Even a less common therapy, the antibody therapy was known by over a third of the participants. It was also great to see that practically everyone knew at least one therapy method. We can conclude that most participants have a basic knowledge about cancer itself and are firm with the conventional cancer therapies, yet mostly lack knowledge about more progressive methods.
Our last question about cancer, which was not included in the online survey due to the web client’s limitations, was how important the development of new therapies against cancer is for our participants. The results pretty much met our expectations, as the majority, 150 (72%) participants, think that it is of very high importance to develop new therapies and another 29 (14%) give it a high importance.
Gene therapy
The third part of our survey dealt with the topic gene therapy, a rather controversial topic, yet a crucial part of our project, as it uses certain aspects of gene therapy. Similar to the cancer part, we first wanted to know how well our participants’ knowledge is about gene therapy. It turned out that 96 (31%) participants had no knowledge at all about gene therapy and another 90 (29%) only very little. 63 (20%) said they have some knowledge, only 32 (10%) have good and 27 (9%) have very good knowledge about gene therapy. Those results were not surprising to us, as gene therapy is a rather new therapy concept, compared to i.e. chemotherapy and only rarely used.
Afterwards, we gave our participants a short text about gene therapy to give them at least some basic information, so they could answer the following questions easier.
Building on that, we wanted to know from what sources our participants would obtain information about both, cancer and gene therapy.
It turns out that, as in most other everyday situations, the internet is the primary source of information, followed by public lectures held at i.e. university facilities. Almost half of the participants would also consider consulting their physician, a third would visit a hospital.
What we were also interested in was the participants’ attitude towards gene therapy itself, as it is a highly controversial topic and often connected with things like designer babies, rather than focusing on the actual therapeutical application that is possible today. Hence we were surprised to find out that most (127, 41%) participants have a rather positive attitude towards gene therapy, followed by 107 (35%) participants having a neutral attitude. 59 (19%) participants even showed a very positive attitude and only 5% had a negative to very negative attitude.
Regarding cancer, we also wanted to know if our participants would prefer gene therapy over conventional cancer therapies, like the side-effect ridden chemotherapy. 150 (49%) of our participants stated that they would neither prefer nor reject gene therapy. 112 (36%) participants even would prefer gene therapy over conventional therapies. When asked if they would let gene therapy be applied on themselves, the results were similar. 61 (20%) participants think it would be very likely that they would let gene therapy be applied on them, 125 (41%) think it is likely, 100 (32%) think it may be a possibility, less than 10% think that it is unlikely to very unlikely.
Cross referencing between educational level and level of knowledge of gene therapy
We wanted to know how far the educational level is linked to the knowledge about gene therapy. While the knowledge about cancer stays constant throughout all educational levels, gene therapy shows some variations. The best educated about gene therapy are participants with a university degree, while participants with a lower secondary education or a secondary school leaving certificate had mostly no knowledge at all. University-degree holders also show the highest acceptancy for gene therapy.
Conclusion
After evaluating the survey, we can say the following things: Most people throughout all educational levels have at least a basic level of knowledge about cancer, yet most do not know a lot about gene therapy or newer cancer therapies in general. Still, the majority thinks that it is of high importance to develop new, more progressive cancer therapies, like we do. Surprisingly, the acceptance for gene therapy in general was higher than we expected, showing that people are seemingly more open for newer methods. See Tables
References
[1] = Oncolytic viruses: a new class of immunotherapy drugs. Kaufman HL, Kohlhapp FJ, Zloza A. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2015 Sep 1;14(9):642-62. doi: 10.1038/nrd4663. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26323545[2] = Delivery and therapeutic applications of gene editing technologies ZFNs, TALENs, and CRISPR/Cas9. LaFountaine JS, Fathe K, Smyth HD. Int J Pharm. 2015 Aug 13;494(1):180-194. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpharm.2015.08.029. [Epub ahead of print] Review. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26278489
Tables
| n questioned | 308 | 100% |
| 1. Gender | ||
| male | 99 | 32% |
| female | 146 | 47% |
| not specified | 63 | 20% |
| 2. age | ||
| <18 | 4 | 1% |
| 18-29 | 284 | 82% |
| 30-45 | 5 | 1% |
| 46-55 | 9 | 3% |
| 56-65 | 5 | 1% |
| >65 | 6 | 2 |
| not specified | 35 | 10% |
| 3. educational status | ||
| no degree | 0 | 0% |
| Lower secondary education | 8 | 3% |
| secondary school leaving certificate | 20 | 6% |
| High-school diploma | 232 | 75% |
| university degree | 42 | 14% |
| not specified | 5 | 2% |
| 4. level of knowledge: cancer (1: very high - 5: none) | ||
| 1 | 26 | 8% |
| 2 | 70 | 23% |
| 3 | 134 | 44% |
| 4 | 67 | 22% |
| 5 | 11 | 4% |
| 5. importance of developing new cancer therapies (1: very high - 5: none) | ||
| 1 | 150 | 72% |
| 2 | 29 | 14% |
| 3 | 5 | 2% |
| 4 | 13 | 6% |
| 5 | 11 | 5% |
| 6. Which cancer therapy methods do you knwo? (multiple answers possible) | ||
| Chemotherapy | 308 | 100% |
| Radiation therapy | 257 | 83% |
| Antibody therapy | 118 | 38% |
| Surgical therapy | 217 | 70% |
| Prodrug therapy | 17 | 6% |
| Viral therapy | 60 | 19% |
| None | 2 | 1% |
| 7. level of knowledge: gene therapy (1: very high - 5: none) | ||
| 1 | 27 | 9% |
| 2 | 32 | 10% |
| 3 | 63 | 20% |
| 4 | 90 | 29% |
| 5 | 96 | 31% |
| 8. Where would you gather information about gene/cancer therapy? (multiple answers possible) | ||
| physician | 143 | 46% |
| internet | 254 | 82% |
| relatives | 88 | 29% |
| hospital | 98 | 32% |
| lectures | 158 | 51% |
| 9. Would you prefer gene therapy over conventional therapies? (1: very likely - 5: very unlikely) | ||
| 1 | 25 | 8% |
| 2 | 112 | 36% |
| 3 | 150 | 49% |
| 4 | 15 | 5% |
| 5 | 6 | 2% |
| 10. Attitude towards gene therapy (1: very positive - 5: very negative) | ||
| 1 | 59 | 19% |
| 2 | 127 | 41% |
| 3 | 107 | 35% |
| 4 | 10 | 3% |
| 5 | 5 | 2% |
| 11. Personal application of gene therapy (1: much likely - 5: highly unlikely) | ||
| 1 | 61 | 20% |
| 2 | 125 | 41% |
| 3 | 100 | 32% |
| 4 | 14 | 5% |
| 5 | 8 | 3% |
