PURPOSE
The aims of this study were to develope a structural model of health insensitivity and to verify the model of health insensitivity. METHOD: There were three theoretical variables in the hypothetical model. The endogenous variable was health insensitivity which is a concept including bluntness of health risk perception and unhealthy behavior. The exogenous variables were composed of personal factors and socio-cultural factors. In personal factors, neuroticism, external health locus of control, blunting style of information-seeking, deficit of self-efficacy, knowledge deficit related to health, health-related experience, age and education were included. Whereas socio-cultural factors include perceived group size of unhealthy behavior and stereotypes of unhealthy behavior. RESULT: Personal factors and sociocultural factors were significant in explanation of the health insensitivity. Relationship between personal factors and sociocultural factors was significant, too. However, the optimistic bias as part of health insensitivity was not supported by these data. GFI, AGFI and PGFI were .95, .92, .65, respectively. Therefore, this model was verified to be a good fit to the data and parsimonious. CONCLUSION: Nursing to change unhealthy behavior has focused on personal factors rather than sociocultural factors. Based on this result, however, the sociocultural factors should be considered as well.

PURPOSE
The aim of this study was to identify the age-related differences in risk perception of breast cancer and the age-related differences in predictors of risk perception. METHOD: The subjects were 553 women aged from 15 to 64 who lived in Seoul, Kwang-Ju, Jeon-nam province. Data was collected by self-reported questionnaire surveys using convenience sampling. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, F-test with Scheffe test, and stepwise multiple regression with SPSS-Win 10.0 version. RESULT: Risk perception of breast cancer was different by age group. Especially, risk perception in teenagers and the 50~64 years group was lower than the other groups. Additionally, general fear of breast cancer, information seeking style, experience, and knowledge were different between the age groups. The results of multiple regression analyses predicting risk perception indicated the following significant predictors: general fear and knowledge in all the subjects, general fear and experience in the 20~29 years group, and general fear in the other age groups. CONCLUSION: These results suggested that the construction of educational messages for breast cancer prevention and early detection should be designed differently for each age group.