Table 2.

Percentage of Stories About Cancer Morbidity Risk That Mention Specific Cancer Risks and Formats^a Used to Describe the Risks, by Newspaper Source, 2003^b

Cancer Risk Category	Mainstream Newspapersc			Ethnic Newspapersd			P Valuee
	Overallf	Numericf	Nonnumericf	Overallf	Numericf	Nonnumericf
Lifestyle
Alcohol	3.6	0.5	3.0	6.4	0.4	6.0	.09
Tobacco	18.4	1.7	16.6	23.5	4.3	19.2	.02
Exercise	5.4	0.5	4.9	14.5	0	14.5	<.001
Diet/nutrition	14.3	1.5	12.7	31.2	1.3	29.9	<.001
Sexual practices	2.4	0.3	2.2	2.6	0	2.6	.67
Sun exposure	6.6	2.7	4.0	3.0	0.4	2.6	.06
Obesity	5.5	0.7	4.8	11.1	0	11.1	<.001
Genetic	18.7	2.0	16.7	28.2	3.0	25.2	.003
Demographic
Race	11.0	3.4	7.6	51.3	17.5	33.8	<.001
Age	22.8	2.4	20.3	29.1	1.3	27.8	.02
SES	4.2	0.3	3.8	3.0	0.4	2.6	.61
Medications	12.4	3.6	8.7	2.6	0	2.6	<.001
Surgery	3.1	0.3	2.8	2.1	0	2.1	.56
Virus/infectious agent	3.8	0.7	3.1	2.1	0	2.1	.32
Environmental/occupational
Air/water pollutants	9.8	0.9	8.9	4.7	0.4	4.3	.04
Pesticides/chemicals	8.7	0.8	7.9	5.6	0	5.6	.16
Occupational hazards	7.3	0.6	6.6	1.3	0	1.3	.002

Abbreviation: SES, socioeconomic status.

^a "Numeric" refers to story formats that quantified cancer risk; "nonnumeric," to story formats that did not quantify cancer risk.

^b Because of rounding, numeric and nonnumeric percentages may not equal overall percentages.

^c "Mainstream" was defined as the 50 highest-circulating newspapers that were accessible through the Lexis-Nexis database (n = 44).

^d "Ethnic" was defined as all English-language newspapers in the Ethnic NewsWatch database (n = 283).

^e P values were calculated by using Pearson χ² analysis.

^f Percentage values do not necessarily correspond with Table 1 because some stories contain more than 1 risk category.