OBJECTIVES : Cervical cancer is the seventh most common type of cancer (among women) in Europe. There is an organized cervical cancer screening system in Hungary since 2003. Most women participate “traditionally”, out of this system or ignore invitation and do not accept the opportunity. This behaviour is typical among Romany minority population, which is Hungary’s largest ethnic group. Many stereotypes live in our society about Romany people, like starting sexual activity at earlyage, giving birth to many children. Our study aimed to answer two questions: What is the proportion of women participating in cervical cancer screening? What factors influence the attendance of screening?

METHODS : A quantitative, cross-sectional study was carried out. Our sample consisted of Romany women from Zala, Baranya and Somogy county, Hungary (N=368). Convenience sampling method was applied in the study. The self-administered questionnaire included the following groups of questions: socio-demographic data, attitude examination related to screening, reasons for absence. Besides SPSS Statistic 20.00 test, x test, t-test, and ANOVA were used (p<0.05). During the Principal Component Analysis, 41 variables of the motivational scale were grouped into seven theoretical subgroups, and KMO values was 0.906 (excellent).

RESULTS : The mean age of the participants was 36.43±11.27 years. 17.39% never attended gynaecological screening. The items of the first (“Reasons of rejection”), second factors (“Absence –due to psychic, timely, material reasons”) and third factor („Determinate reason for attendance”) show significant correlation with the socio-demographic factors (p<0.05). Fourth factors (“Motivating factors for attendance on behalf of personal, environmental conditions”) show no significant correlation with the socio-demographic factors (p>0.05).

CONCLUSIONS : There is a need of enthusiastic and continuous performance of screening in the romany community, the key step towards increasing attendance rate could be the wider spreading of information amongst them.