Reducing Underage Drinking A Collective Responsibility (2004) / Chapter Skim
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10 Media Intervention Impact: Evidence and Promising Strategies--Charles Atkin
10 Media Intervention Impact: Evidence and Promising Strategies--Charles Atkin
Pages 565-596
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From page 565... ...
Unlike the current national drug campaign, which is funded sufficiently to disseminate a huge volume of prominently placed messages with sophisticated design and professional executions, underage alcohol campaigns are far more limited in quantity and quality. MEDIA CAMPAIGN DESIGN Disciplined campaign design begins with an assessment of the behavioral aspects of the youth drinking problem in order to determine which actions should be performed by which segments of the population.
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From page 566... ...
. Direct Effects on Underage Individuals In general, health campaigns that are targeted directly to the focal segment of the population tend to have a modest degree of impact, with limited effects on fundamental behavior patterns.
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From page 567... ...
The field may be well advised to diversify the approaches to campaign design beyond conventional practices. Alcohol prevention campaigns rely on a narrow set of approaches (e.g., social norming, threat of physical harm)
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From page 568... ...
To achieve the maximum degree of communication impact, campaign designers often attempt to pick off the easy targets. In the case of drinking prevention campaigns, two basic predispositional categories of young people are most readily influenced by media messages.
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From page 569... ...
On the other hand, frequent binge drinkers are not readily influenced by media campaigns. Although this segment is in greatest need of change, it may be fruitless to invest heavy resources to induce immediate discontinuation or moderation of drinking.
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From page 570... ...
Alarming fear appeals can be quite influential if handled adeptly, but other incentives also should be emphasized: threats of a less severe nature, negative incentives beyond the physical health domain, and positive incentives. Intense Fear Appeals A pervasive strategy in health campaigns is to motivate behavior change by threatening the audience with harmful consequences from initiating or continuing an unhealthy practice.
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From page 571... ...
In the case of youth alcohol campaigns, minor negative incentives include diminished athletic performance, weight gain, or hangovers. Not only are these outcomes far more frequent, but levels of perceived susceptibility may be elevated due to observed or experienced conditions misattributed to alcohol rather than other origins.
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From page 572... ...
Positive social incentives include conforming to prevalent social norms (see next section) , being cool, gaining approval and respect, forming deeper friendships, building trust with parents, and being a good role model.
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From page 573... ...
Thus, the persuasive appeal emphasizes positive social incentives rather than negative threats of physically harmful outcomes. Dozens of campuses nationwide have implemented major media-based social norms campaigns, including extensive and sophisticated efforts during the early and mid-1990s at Northern Illinois, Arizona, Hobart and William Smith, Western Washington, and Washington State.
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From page 574... ...
. According to the latest data available at the National Social Norms Resource Center Web site, declines in heavy episodic alcohol consumption have been achieved on the following campuses: 44 percent in ten years at Northern Illinois, 40 percent over four
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From page 575... ...
The strategic ambiguity approach is employed quite shrewdly by the alcohol companies in their "private service" campaigns dealing with risky drinking. These campaigns use ambiguous slogans such as "know when to say when" or "think when you drink" to attain multiple objectives simultaneously: combat the drunk driving or alcohol poisoning problems among extreme drinkers (without significantly undermining consumption levels by
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From page 576... ...
For college students under age 21, explicit recommendations to abstain (in accordance with the drinking laws) would have limited acceptance.
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From page 577... ...
. Campaign Pitfalls As with other health topics, drinking prevention campaigns targeted to the focal segments of youth must address resistance barriers at each stage of audience response, from exposure to processing to learning to yielding to behavioral implementation.
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From page 578... ...
This approach is seldom fully practiced because many organizations that sponsor health campaigns (and campaign designers) succumb to various irresistible temptations: they are occasionally contemptuous (regarding the focal segment as misbehavers who are ignorant and misguided)
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From page 579... ...
. Thus, campaigns tend to overemphasize creative self-expression, clever sloganeering, artistic production values, celebrity spokespersons, exciting visual channels, and powerful fear appeals threatening severe harm.
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From page 580... ...
In the mass media, numerous news stories, advertisements, entertainment portrayals, and other public service campaigns present content consistent with alcohol campaign goals. Similarly, individuals may not be conscious of certain social norms, interpersonal influences, behavioral models, or societal conditions that might contribute to performance of the target behavior.
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From page 581... ...
Mass media campaigns have considerable potential for producing effects on institutions and groups at the national and community levels, as well as motivating personal influencers in close contact with the focal individuals. These audiences are more likely to be receptive to media messages, and their indirectly stimulated control activities are more likely to be effective than campaign messages directly targeted to the focal segment.
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From page 582... ...
; self-reported rates of binge drinking and impaired driving also decreased for the overall population in intervention sites. The primary role of the media was to mobilize community support for the prevention interventions via media advocacy techniques drawing attention to alcohol problems and issues, and news coverage of the policy implementation activities (Holder and Treno, 1997)
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From page 583... ...
The influencers are likely to be responsive to negative appeals that arouse concern about harmful consequences to those they're trying to help behave appropriately. For example, campaigners can avoid the defensive resistance problem of directly targeted fear appeals by aiming the threats to audiences who care about these harmful consequences and who are in a position to influence the focal segment.
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From page 584... ...
. They can also facilitate appropriate behavior by creating alternative opportunities for teenagers or college students.
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From page 585... ...
Source, Channel, and Dissemination Factors Regardless of whether interventions are directly targeting young people or indirectly attempting to impact youth via environmental initiatives, the campaign designers must also consider the other key factors that determine campaign effectiveness: the source messengers and sponsors, the myriad channels for reaching various audiences, and the quantity of messages to be disseminated.
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From page 586... ...
(1992) reported that brewer-sponsored "private service" ads that ostensibly promoted moderate or safe drinking were regarded by high school and college students as less informative, believable, on target, and effective than PSAs sponsored by government agencies or associations.
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From page 587... ...
Newspapers and TV news. Health campaigners have traditionally underutilized public relations techniques for generating news and feature story coverage in the mass media.
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From page 588... ...
On the other hand, there may be limitations on the frequency of disseminating certain ideas that are considered to be "old news" by the gatekeepers, and it may be difficult to reach key focal segments of youth unless diligent efforts are made to place the messages in alternative channels. Second, messages appearing in the news media (and some entertainment settings)
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From page 589... ...
Although lacking the glamour of a TV spot or the depth of a fulllength booklet, these forms of communication can serve valuable functions in a campaign at a fairly low cost. The numerous alcohol prevention projects that have used minimedia indicate that campaign designers appreciate these inexpensive but potent channels.
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From page 590... ...
Another quantitative consideration involves the scheduling of a fixed number of presentations; depending on the situation, campaign messages may be most effectively concentrated over a short duration, dispersed thinly over a lengthy period, or distributed in intermittent bursts of "flighting" or "pulsing." Unfortunately, the limited resources available for most public service campaigns greatly restrict the quantity of messages disseminated. Unlike commercial advertisers who can place numerous messages in the media and rely on high-repetition, soft-sell strategies based on principles of mere exposure or other peripheral paths of influence, campaign designers need to achieve the most "bang for the buck" by making each message provocative, involving, and engaging in order to attract attention and facilitate processing.
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From page 591... ...
Research and theory of media health campaigns indicates that relatively few messages score exactly on target, although some come close; the perfect message requires greater customization than normally can be attained through mass communication channels. Nevertheless, campaigners keep using the media because the extremely large audiences can be reached efficiently; even if a relatively small percentage are influenced, the small
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From page 592... ...
Moreover, media advocacy techniques should be used in campus newspapers to mobilize initiatives for environmental change, particularly with messages targeted to those who are experiencing negative secondhand effects from excessive drinkers. To combat underage drinking in noncollege settings, a national campaign should be targeted to parents of teenagers and to community leaders, using TV spots, magazine ads, and news publicity items to provide support for localized environmental efforts.
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From page 593... ...
. Effects of normative feedback on consump tion among heavy drinking college students.
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From page 594... ...
. The role of mass media campaigns in reducing high-risk drinking among college students.
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From page 595... ...
. A practical guide to alcohol abuse prevention: A campus case study in implementing social norms and envi ronmental management approaches.
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From page 596... ...
. Results of a social norms intervention to prevent binge drinking among first-year residential college students.
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