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To effectively discourage youth smoking, antismoking public service announcements (PSAs) must be attention-getting, provocative, engaging, memorable, as well as illustrate convincing reasons not to smoke. Considerations of how ads look (form) and what they say (content) are critical to developing antismoking PSAs. However, scientific studies provide little information that guides decisions about effective message design. Thus, the proposed addresses an important research question: How do the form and content of antismoking PSAs affect young people's attitudes towards the ads themselves and (more importantly) the health-relevant behaviors they advocate?
The proposed research is concerned with testing the effects of two characteristics of antismoking PSAs, content and formal features. Content will be examined by comparing PSAs that focus on the behavior ofsmokers (illustrating negative consequences of smoking and second-hand smoke) and PSAs that focus on the behavior of the tobacco industry (exposing deceptive marketing tactics of tobacco manufacturers). This distinction between PSAs that focus on individual smokers versus the tobacco industry is important because existing research is uncertain as to which content theme more effectively discourages tobacco use and denormalizes smoking.
Apart from content, PSAs also vary in appearance -- the combination of editing, pacing, music, use of color or black-and-white, and close-up shots, that create the "look and feel" of the message. The effect of these formal features will be examined by comparing complex ads (many edits, fast-paced, different camera angles, much movement, facial close-ups) and simple ads (few edits, slow-paced, few camera angles, little movement, distant shots). Studying the effect of formal features is important because these attributes have been shown to influence memory and evaluation of ads for commercial products and political candidates.
The proposed research would: (1) examine the content of current antismoking PSAs gathered from several states and Canada; (2) assess audience reaction to these ads in a pilot study with young adults; and (3) conduct an experiment to examine the effects of content (individual vs. industry) and formal features (simple vs. complex) on ad specific outcomes (memory, liking, involvement, interest) and health relevant outcomes (antismoking attitudes and norms). This research would contribute to California prevention efforts by demonstrating which combination of formal features and content make antismoking PSAs most memorable, believable and, therefore, effective. |
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To effectively discourage youth smoking, antismoking ads must be attention-getting, provocative, engaging, memorable, as well as illustrate convincing reasons not to smoke. Considerations of how ads look (form) and what they say (content) are critical to developing antismoking ads. But, scientific
studies provide little information that guides decisions about effective message design. Thus, this study addresses an important research question: How do the form (i.e. formal features: editing, pacing, music, use of color or black-and-white, and close-up shots) and content ads that focus on individual behavior vs. ads that focus on the tobacco industry) of antismoking ads affect young people's attitudes towards the ads themselves and (more importantly) the health-relevant behaviors they advocate? The content distinction is important because existing research is uncertain as to which content theme more effectively discourages tobacco use and denormalizes smoking. Studying the effect of formal features is important because these attributes have been shown to influence memory and evaluation of ads for commercial products and political candidates.
The following has been achieved: (1) the dissertation findings of the principal investigator have been reanalyzed. (2) The reanalyzed results have been presented at two academic conferences and they are under review at academic journal. (3) An extensive literature review regarding content analysis was conducted. (4) A content analysis codebook was drafted; it was designed to measure content themes, formal features and other related attributes of anti-smoking ads. (5) An instruction-book to accompany the codebook was drafted. (6) The codebook and the instruction-book were subjected to review and pretesting. (7) 309 unique ads were collected for the content analysis. (8) An application was filed to change approved expenditures to hire two experienced coders to code the anti-smoking ads. (9) The application to change approved expenditures to hire two coders was approved. (10) 205 ads were content analyzed by the two coders. (11) The data from the content analysis was entered into a data file. (12) The program file needed to analyze the data was created.
Because of the early termination of this project the following items were not completed: (1) the coding of 104 ads, (2) the analysis of the content analysis data, (3) the ad pretest, (4) the experiment that was to compare the effects of content themes, formal features and smoking status on outcomes that are ad-specific and health-relevant, and (5) the evaluation of the effects of antismoking ads on two samples that have different tobacco control culture from the area used for my dissertation research (i.e., the Midwest for my dissertation and California for this study). The potential impact of these results would have derived from the fact that TV antismoking ads remain a primary method used to battle smoking in the U.S. Thus, it was important, in part because the States now have access to more funds than ever to produce such ads, to determine which features combine to make antismoking ads more effective from a public health perspective. |
