Development of a smoking prevention mass media program using diagnostic and formative research.
The process of developing a mass media campaign to prevent smoking among adolescents is described in detail. This campaign supplements a school smoking prevention program and shares educational objectives with the school program but is otherwise independent. It comprises various television and radio 30- and 60-sec "spot" messages. The campaign development process includes identifying educational objectives and strategies for appealing to young people; conducting diagnostic surveys and focus groups to determine target audience interests and perceptions about smoking and media content; suggesting approaches to producers to create preliminary television and radio messages for testing; conducting formative pretests with target groups to select optimal messages and suggest improvements to those messages; producing final messages for media presentation; and developing a media exposure plan to place messages in local media at optimal times for reception by target audiences. The media campaign is being evaluated in a 5-year project with 5,500 adolescents in four communities to determine the additional effect of mass media over a school program alone in preventing smoking.
Worden
J K
JK
Office of Health Promotion Research, University of Vermont, Burlington 05405.
Flynn
B S
BS
Geller
B M
BM
Chen
M
M
Shelton
L G
LG
Secker-Walker
R H
RH
Solomon
D S
DS
Solomon
L J
LJ
Couchey
S
S
Costanza
M C
MC
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008402:Mass Media; D011845:Radio; D012572:School Health Services; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D013690:Television; D014481:United States