Project Title: Mass Media Intervention to Reduce Youth Smoking, Project 1: Message Development Using Audience Research

Abstract:

Mass Media Intervention to Reduce Youth Smoking is a program that creates new television and radio advertisements to help young people avoid cigarette smoking. It is a joint program conducted by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Vermont, and is funded by the National Cancer Institute. The main purpose of the program is to produce a spectrum of ads appealing to student of different ages and genders who have different interests. We work with students from grades 4 through 12 to create new ideas for TV and radio ads to prevent youth from smoking and to help them quit smoking. We will accomplish this by giving students a short survey about their interests in leisure activities and media and perceptions about smoking. We will have follow-up discussion groups for student to talk further about their interests, perceptions and suggestions for new ads. With this input, we will create new ads and test the ads at two stages of production to see if they appeal to the students. The program will produce television and radio ads with help from a few class sections each year in both the San Antonio (Texas) Northside Independent School District and Miami-Dade County (Florida) School District. These districts were selected because they have a good representation of Hispanic, African American, and white students. The ads that students rate most highly will then be put on the air in communities in states where the study is being conducted. The Mass Media Interventions to Reduce Youth Smoking program will develop methods of design and delivery of comprehensive, theory-based media campaigns to reduce the prevalence of cigarette smoking among ethnically diverse adolescents, and to assess the effects of these methods on the prevention and cessation of tobacco use among these targeted populations.

The proposal has 3 components. Project 1: Message Development Using Audience Research, will conduct formative research to develop theory-based smoking prevention and cessation messages for media campaigns. Project 2: Reducing Youth Smoking Using Mass Media, will develop media messages in 4-year campaigns designed to prevent smoking among adolescents and will evaluate their effectiveness in 4 intervention mass media markets vs. 4 comparison sites. Project 3: Youth Smoking Cessation Using Mass Media, will develop a 3-year campaign to help adolescents stop smoking and will evaluate their effectiveness with a cohort of weekly smokers established at baseline in 4 intervention mass media markets in 4 comparison sites.

The University of Vermont will oversee and conduct the majority of the activities of this project. The Baylor College of Medicine contract will be responsible for staff training and coordination for formative research activities (i.e., diagnostic survey interviewers and focus group discussion leaders) associated with Project 1. Other contractors will carry out all other evaluation activities in Projects 1, 2 and 3, and IRB approval will be obtained through their respective institutions.

PI:

  • John K. Worden, PhD, University of Vermont, Department of Family Medicine, UVM College of Medicine's Office of Health Promotion Research

Co-PI's/Subcontractual:

  • Amelie G. Ramirez, DrPH, Professor of Medicine and Deputy Director of the Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine
  • James G. Ross, MS, Macro International, Inc., Subcontract for Data Collection

Funding Institution:

National Institute of Health

Funding Period:

5 yrs.– 2000-2004

Location/Service Area:

  • University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
  • Baylor College of Medicine, Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Research Center, Houston, TX
  • University of Minnesota, Data Collection Support Service Center, Minneapolis, MN
  • Macro International, Silver Spring and Calverton, MD
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Miami, FL
  • Schools and media outlets in: Amarillo, TX, Lubbock, TX, Charleston, SC, Columbia, SC, Ft. Myers, FL, West Palm Beach, FL, Grand Rapids, MI, Saginaw, MI

Collaborators/Co-sponsors:

  • University of Vermont
  • University of California, Irvine
  • University of Miami
  • OD Systems
  • Porter Novelli
  • Langbourne Rust Research, Inc.
  • Just Kid, Inc.
  • Sports Illustrated for Kids

Goals:

Develop comprehensive mass media campaign to reduce the prevalence of cigarette smoking among youth.

Results:

Program to Reduce Youth Smoking through Media (PRYSM) School Participation Update 2004/05: During Fall 2004, students in selected San Antonio, Texas and Miami, Florida schools participated in the PRYSM ad rating sessions, which we refer to as pre-testing our media campaigns. This helped us to develop anti-smoking advertisements that were later tested on a much larger scale in 4 states. Our first media campaign went on the air in the 4 participating states in January of 2002. For each year thereafter (2003, 2004 and 2005), a new campaign has or is being developed.

The ad development process for PRYSM relies on information provided by students about their hobbies, likes and dislikes, experiences with smoking, and opinions about the ads that are produced. Each yearly cycle of ad development relies on information collected during previous diagnostic testing, where students filled out a survey about their media preferences, such as favorite singer, actor, and television shows. They also answered questions about their hobbies, interests, and wishes, as well as their attitudes and habits about cigarette smoking. The data collected from the diagnostic testing was used to provide information to producers for the development of concepts for television and radio advertisements. The information was presented by grade level, or "campaign," in the form of the PRYSM Writer's Notebook.

During 2005 (the final cycle), a total of 60 concepts were submitted by producers and then reviewed by a panel of experts who determined that 22 of them would go into production. Once these selected concepts were produced, the PRYSM Pre-Testing survey was administered in classrooms in Miami and San Antonio. Ads were shown to students who rated them one-by-one. The ads were geared toward three distinct grade levels: Grades 4-6, Grades 7-8, and Grades 9-12. Student input from each level helped PRYSM researchers narrow down which ads continued on to final production, and which ads did not. Students were asked to view or listen to each ad, and then identify which of PRYSM's four main objectives the ad met (good things happen when you don't smoke, bad things happen when you do smoke, most kids don't smoke, and ways to refuse a cigarette). They were then asked to rate how much they liked each ad. Students were also asked to discuss the ads out loud in order to provide ideas about how to make them better. Of the 22 ads that students were played, 14 went into final production based on their input.

In addition to rating the ads, students were asked general demographic questions and also about their experience with smoking. These questions were asked to determine if participants that were smokers or were at risk of becoming smokers preferred different ads than those that were not. Researchers also examined whether ad preferences differed by race and gender.

The 14 ads that students rated the highest were placed on the air in January 2005 in the communities participating in the larger study, and ran through the beginning of April 2005.

In summary, an analysis sample was obtained from 1,230 youth ages 9-18 in four public school districts located in California, Texas, Florida, and the District of Columbia. The districts provided similar proportions of Grades 4-6, 7-8, and 9-12 students, comprised of 34% African American, 31% Hispanic, and 34% non-Hispanic white or from other groups. A total of 48 classrooms with students from four classrooms in each targeted age category in each district were recruited with a student participation rate of 92.5%. Of those sampled, 55% were classified at high risk of smoking and 45% at low risk.

Potential Impact:

This project will increase the knowledge about how to increase the effectiveness of mass media campaigns targeting adolescents and teens that encourages tobacco control and seeks to reduce the prevalence of cigarette smoking among youth.

Publications:

Published Manuscripts:

  • Solomon LJ, Bunn JY, Pirie PL, Worden JK, and Flynn BS. Self-efficacy and outcome expectations for quitting among adolescent smokers. Addictive Behaviors 2006 Jul; 31(7: 1122-32. Epub 2005 Aug 31.