Effectiveness of a Media Campaign to Reduce

Abstract

This article describes the evaluation of a 4-1/2-month multimedia traffic-safety campaign that targeted young drivers in northeastern Tennessee. Discussion groups with teenagers provided the basis for public-service announcements (TV, radio, and billboard), which were developed specifically for this intervention. To determine the impact on crash frequencies among drivers 16-19 years old, baseline, intervention, and follow-up crash data were obtained from statistics maintained by the state. A time-series analysis of these data indicated that during the intervention period, there was a 21.6% decrease in crashes for which 16-19-year-old drivers were at fault, whereas a control location in southeastern Tennessee exhibited no significant change. ____ Tri-Cities ---Intervention Site -----Hamilton County---Comparison Site Pre-InterventionPost-Intervention Figure 2. Frequency of serious-injury crashes involving 16-19-year-old at-fault drivers between 1994 and 1999 occurring in Tri-Cities (treatment) and Hamilton County (comparison), Tennessee. Lines drawn through the data are best-fit, using least-squares linear regression.624 WHITTAM ET AL.

A systematic review: effectiveness of mass media campaigns for reducing alcohol-impaired driving and alcohol-related crashes

“…Of the 19 included studies [18–36], nine were controlled interrupted time series (CITS) [18, 19, 23–26, 31, 32, 36], seven were uncontrolled interrupted time series (ITS) [20, 21, 27–30, 33] and three were controlled before-after studies (CBA) [22, 34, 35]. Nine [23–28, 31–33] of the studies had concomitant enforcement activities taking place at the time of the media campaign and the effect of the media campaign was not analyzed separately.…”

“…Seven studies [18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 28, 32] specified a target age group for their media campaigns, ranging from 15 to 34 years of age. One study [26] summarized a mixture of media campaigns that had both target age groups and no target age groups.…”

“…Eleven studies [18, 19, 22–26, 31, 32, 35, 36] defined a comparator. One study used different hours in the day (“high alcohol consumption hours” and “low alcohol consumption hours”) for comparison [36].…”

“…One study used different hours in the day (“high alcohol consumption hours” and “low alcohol consumption hours”) for comparison [36]. The rest either compared different counties within the same state [18, 22–24, 35], neighboring states [19, 25, 31, 32], or data from the entire nation [26]. …”

“…Based on the results of quality assessment, four studies were rated as good [18–21], five as intermediate [22–26], and eight as low [27–34]. The quality of two studies [35, 36] could not be assessed due to unavailability of the manuscript but they were included in this review as they were included in the review by Elder [8].…”