A meta-analysis was performed of studies of mediated health campaigns in the United States in order to examine the effects of the campaigns on behavior change. Mediated health campaigns have small measurable effects in the short-term. Campaign effect sizes varied by the type of behavior: r=.15 for seat belt use, r=.13 for oral health, r=.09 for alcohol use reduction, r=.05 for heart disease prevention, r=.05 for smoking, r=.04 for mammography and cervical cancer screening, and r=.04 for sexual behaviors. Campaigns with an enforcement component were more effective than those without. To predict campaign effect sizes for topics other than those listed above, researchers can take into account whether the behavior in a cessation campaign was addictive, and whether the campaign promoted the commencement of a new behavior, versus cessation of an old behavior, or prevention of a new undesirable behavior. Given the small campaign effect sizes, campaign planners should set modest goals for future campaigns. The results can also be useful to evaluators as a benchmark for campaign effects and to help estimate necessary sample size.

No abstract

Objective: To test whether alcohol advertising expenditures and the degree of exposure to alcohol advertisements affect alcohol consumption by youth.Design: Longitudinal panel using telephone surveys. Participants: Individuals aged 15 to 26 years were randomly sampled within households and households within media markets. Markets were systematically selected from the top 75 media markets, representing 79% of the US population. The baseline refusal rate was 24%. Sample sizes per wave were 1872, 1173, 787, and 588. Data on alcohol advertising expenditures on television, radio, billboards, and newspapers were collected.Main Exposures: Market alcohol advertising expenditures per capita and self-reported alcohol advertising exposure in the prior month.Main Outcome Measure: Self-reported number of alcoholic drinks consumed in the prior month.Results: Youth who saw more alcohol advertisements on average drank more (each additional advertisement seen increased the number of drinks consumed by 1% [event rate ratio, 1.01; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.02]). Youth in markets with greater alcohol advertising expenditures drank more (each additional dollar spent per capita raised the number of drinks consumed by 3% [event rate ratio, 1.03; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.05]). Examining only youth younger than the legal drinking age of 21 years, alcohol advertisement exposure and expenditures still related to drinking. Youth in markets with more alcohol advertisements showed increases in drinking levels into their late 20s, but drinking plateaued in the early 20s for youth in markets with fewer advertisements. Control variables included age, gender, ethnicity, high school or college enrollment, and alcohol sales. Conclusion:Alcohol advertising contributes to increased drinking among youth.

No abstract

No abstract

Exposure to trauma can lead to both posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress, but little is known about the commonalities and differences in the pathways through which they occur. The authors examined coping and emotional reactions as mediators of the effect of television exposure on both posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress in a nationally representative sample of 1,004 U.S. adults approximately 6 weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Although posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress symptoms were moderately positively related, the pathways from coping and emotions to the outcomes differed: Positive coping and anger were more strongly related to posttraumatic growth than to posttraumatic stress, and pathways of negative coping and feeling depressed regarding the attacks were more strongly related to stress than to growth. Comparison of models suggested that emotions are both outcomes of and motivators for coping and that patterns of coping and emotions relate differentially to posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth.

Some fundamental concepts in agenda-setting are related to a simple cognitive memory decay process. Accounting for issue obtrusiveness and amounts of prior coverage, predictions for the size of the relationship between declining accumulated television coverage and issue salience are derived. Levels of declining accumulated coverage are estimated by applying an exponential decay function to the prominence of daily television coverage. This function presumably models simple forgetting of coverage that occurs within individual audience members. Three issues (inflation, Iran, and the Soviet Union) were investigated over an 1,826-day period, using the daily prominence of television coverage obtained from television news archives and daily salience of the issues interpolated from monthly archived poll data. The size of the relationship between accumulated coverage and issue salience was found to decrease with the amount of coverage of an issue prior to the beginning of the study period. A new unobtrusive issue (Iran) was found to have the strongest agenda-setting effects and more rapidly declining coverage effects than other issues.

Mass media interventions may be useful in reducing global HIV/AIDS disparities because of their reach and effectiveness.