Marijuana prevention ad impact: Ad coding and secondary analyses of national data

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed studies are designed to identify the content and structural features of messages that when used in anti-marijuana public service announcements (PSAs) mitigate adolescents' marijuana usage intentions and initiation. Hundreds of anti-marijuana PSAs have been created and aired, their lineage traceable at least to the days of Reefer Madness. The latest in this long line continues today in ads likening brains to fried eggs as a result of drug use ("This is your brain on drugs!"). The history of these efforts is littered with ineffective ads and whole campaigns based on decisions largely bereft of scientific insight. Evaluations of past efforts indicate that many have failed, a consistent outcome that can and must be reversed. The scarcity of positive outcomes is partially understandable. The scientific literature does not provide much in the way of solid guidance regarding the content and structural features of messages that combined might enhance the effectiveness of anti-marijuana PSAs. Equally challenging is the lack of solid research on the interaction of ad features with users' status, whose importance we have examined extensively in our prior research. To begin to redress these problems, we propose a systematic, theory-based, mixed-methods approach utilizing secondary data analysis, PSA coding and evaluation to inform the development of anti- marijuana communications that have a strong chance of persuading youth at all usage levels. We will test and identify the content and structural features of messages affecting ad acceptance, and subsequent attitudes and intentions regarding marijuana-facilitating development of a theoretical approach to guide future prevention efforts The research seeks to accomplish two specific aims: 1) identify (via expert coding and secondary data analysis) the content and structural message features that cohere, and that were associated with positive ad evaluations by respondents in the National Youth Anti-drug Media Campaign, whose evaluations are archived in the National Survey of Parents and Youth (NSPY), a nationally representative survey of US adolescents, and 2) compare adolescents' coding of ads from the NYAMC with those of the expert panel convened in Aim 1 to accomplish two major goals: assess communalities and differences between adult expert coders and those of individuals representative of the ads' adolescent targets; and, more importantly, determine the association between the adolescent judges' coding of various ad characteristics and their overall evaluations of (or attitudes toward) the ads they have coded. The results of this multi-study, multi-method project will guide development of the next generation of anti-marijuana PSAs by identifying the content and structural features associated with desired attitude and behavior change, and will demonstrate the differential effect of these factors youth of varying user status.