The effects of an online decision aid on self-testing for cholesterol and diabetes.

Self-tests, tests on body materials to detect medical conditions, are widely available to the general public. Self-testing does have advantages as well as disadvantages, and the debate on whether self-testing should be encouraged or rather discouraged is still ongoing. One of the concerns is whether consumers have sufficient knowledge to perform the test and interpret the results. An online decision aid (DA) with information on self-testing in general, and test specific information on cholesterol and diabetes self-testing was developed. The DA aims to provide objective information on these self-tests as well as a decision support tool to weigh the pros and cons of self-testing. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of the online decision aid on knowledge on self-testing, informed choice, ambivalence and psychosocial determinants.

The objective of this study is to support consumers in their decision whether they want to perform a self-test or not. By providing objective information on self-testing, we expect knowledge levels of participants who have viewed the decision aid to increase, levels of informed choice to increase, and levels of ambivalence to decrease.

Questionnaires will be sent to participants prior to randomisation, directly after participants have viewed the decision aid or control condition and three months after having viewed the decision aid or control condition.

Intervention: The intervention consists of an online decision aid on self-testing (www.zelftestwijzer.nl), which provides information on self-testing in general, and test specific information on self-tests for glucose and cholesterol. Participants will be invited by email to view the decision aid, and will be informed that a questionnaire will be provided directly after having viewed the website. They will be asked to visit the website once during the next week.

The control group will receive an invitation to read general information on self-testing provided as a pdf file of one page. Questionnaires will be send through the Internet directly after participants have viewed the decision aid or control condition, and three months later.