Objectives Endometrial or womb cancer is the most common gynaecological malignancy in the developed world. Efficient and cost-effective methods of increasing public awareness about womb cancer are research priorities for patients and clinicians. Until now, there has been no accepted measure of womb cancer awareness. We aimed to develop the self-complete Womb Cancer Awareness Measure(WCAM).

Methods Relevant questions on warning signs, risk factors and existing cancer screening programmes were extracted from the literature and ratified by patients and expert clinicians. Reliability and validity were assessed in female research participants aged 19–65(n=65) and expert clinicians(n=10). Readability was calculated using the Flesch Reading Ease formula. Test-retest reliability was tested over two weeks. Construct reliability was established by comparing scores of expert clinicians and non-medical academics. Sensitivity to change was measured by comparing participants who read a womb cancer leaflet against a control leaflet.

Results The readability of the WCAM was high(71%). Test-retest reliability revealed high percentage exact agreement of 78–80% for all items. Discrepancies were due to improvement in the second score, demonstrating that the WCAM completion increased knowledge and awareness. Experts achieved higher knowledge scores than non-medical academics indicating good construct validity(p<0.001). The measure was sensitive to change; the womb cancer leaflet group(n=22) scored higher for cancer awareness [mean 70(13)] than the controls(n=21)[mean 54(6.2)](p<0.001).

Conclusions This study demonstrates the psychometric validity of the WCAM and its potential for use for further testing. Ongoing work will extensively validate this awareness measure in an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population including women at increased risk of womb cancer.