Personal goal-setting among women living with breast cancer: protocol for a scoping review

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer and its treatment can have many physical and psychological effects on affected women. Women’s personal goals may provide insight into their priorities and motivations in the context of breast cancer. Incorporating personal goal-setting into support and care interventions may have an effect on psychological well-being. This protocol describes our scoping review methods, the aim of which is to examine and map the existing evidence on personal goal-setting among women with a breast cancer diagnosis. METHODS: Our scoping review will search for published, full-length articles, where personal goal-setting is a major component of the study, and the study population is females with breast cancer. MEDLINE, PsycInfo, CINAHL, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, and AMED databases will be searched. Two independent reviewers will conduct all screening and extract data. Descriptive information about the studies, participants, any interventions, measurement tools, outcomes, and results will be reported. DISCUSSION: The results from this review will chart the literature, contributing to optimizing the incorporation of personal goal-setting approaches into effective interventions for the care and support of women with breast cancer. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13643-018-0794-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.