Citation

Slater MD. J. Alcohol Drug. Educ. 1999; 44(3): 68-81.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, American Alcohol and Drug Information Foundation)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Health educators and communicators have pointed out that public service announcements (PSAs) often do not utilize theory-driven persuasion and behavior change approaches. In this study, 66 drinking and driving television PSAs were randomly sampled from a collection of 189 such PSAs, and were coded by two independent coders using both a categorical and dimensional (i.e., a message could be scored on multiple categories simultaneously) scheme. The full PSA set was then coded by a single coder. The Jive categories or dimensions included fear, modeling, positive, informational/testimonial appeal, and empathy strategies. The categorical scheme proved highly reliable, and the dimensional scheme only marginally reliable, suggesting that the categorical approach was appropriate. In the entire data set, informational/testimonial messages made up almost half of the coral; positive appeals were the next most common, followed by empathy, fear, and modeling appeals, in that order. Celebrity versions elf each appeal type were found, but were most common in the informational/testimonial appeals. Empathy strategies, in particular, have not been examined in the empirical literature and deserve further study and perhaps greater use by health communicators and educators.