In:Argumentation and Health
Edited by Sara Rubinelli and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans
[Benjamins Current Topics 64] 2014
► pp. 129–141
“It is about our body, our own body!”
On the difficulty of telling Dutch women under 50 that mammography is not for them
Published online: 24 July 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.64.10sch
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.64.10sch
This chapter is concerned with the reasons why sometimes good arguments in health communication leaflets fail to convince the targeted audience. As an illustrative example it uses the age-dependent eligibility of women in the Netherlands to receive routine breast cancer screening examinations: according to Dutch regulations women under 50 are ineligible for them. The present qualitative study rests on and complements three experimental studies on the persuasiveness of mammography information leaflets; it uses interviews to elucidate reasons why the arguments in the health communication leaflets for the exclusion of women under 50 from routine mammographic screenings do not work.
