We are unaware of any previous studies aimed at determining public awareness of the attributable fraction of cancer as a whole or at gauging the level the awareness of cancer prevention by attributable fraction. Accordingly, to our knowledge, this is the first attempt to discover the level of awareness for each risk factor candidate, and the questionnaire used has hence not been fully validated. In addition, as indicated above, responses to this type of cross sectional survey are subject to social conditions such as information from the mass media and other sources on disease epidemics and other putative risk factors. Thus, the results might not necessarily reflect actual public awareness. However, the study subjects were recruited from among a nationally representative random sample, and the response rate was similar to that of recent omnibus surveys in other countries [16] [17] [18] [19] . Nevertheless, the exclusion of non-respondents may have distorted the results.