The effectiveness of mass media campaigns in reducing smoking, second-hand smoke exposure and smoking-related disease in England & Wales

大众媒体的控烟宣传活动旨在鼓励吸烟者戒烟或避免在他人面前吸烟，尤其是在儿童面前。竞选活动可以通过电视、广播、报纸和/或广告牌进行宣传。它们很可能有助于改变吸烟者的行为和减少吸烟，这反过来又有助于减少因吸烟而患上疾病的人数。几乎没有证据表明英国的大众媒体宣传活动有多有效，也没有证据表明这些钱花得值不值。由于缺乏英国的证据，政府在2010年4月停止了对大众媒体活动的资助。然而，就在最近，政府表示可能会再次发起此类运动。因此，对这一专题的研究非常及时，将有助于确定如何最好地做到这一点。该项目将衡量近年来在英格兰和威尔士开展的个别大众媒体宣传活动以及不同类型宣传活动的效果。我们将初步确定个别运动的特点，例如该运动是否旨在鼓励吸烟者戒烟或保护其子女远离吸烟，其情感和信息内容和风格，以及如何(例如通过电视、广播或印刷媒体以及三者之间的平衡)。然后，我们将通过观察成年人口中吸烟行为的一系列指标，如吸烟人数比例、试图戒烟的人数以及在家中吸烟的比例，来考虑每种活动和活动类型产生了多大影响。我们还将衡量大众媒体宣传活动的影响是否会减少吸烟造成的健康问题。例如，我们将通过测量心脏病发作或中风入院人数，以及因呼吸道感染而咨询全科医生的儿童数量来实现这一点。我们将使用统计方法，使我们能够检查这些指标的任何变化如何与大众媒体宣传活动的时机相关联。这些方法还将使我们能够检查是否是大众媒体的宣传活动是重要的，还是其他因素，如同时改变其他烟草政策，是负有责任的。我们将在代表整个英格兰和威尔士的数据集中，以及在可获得的情况下，从特定人口部分的数据中查看吸烟行为和健康的这些变化，例如社会经济条件较差的人群，看看大众媒体运动对这些群体的影响是否相同。我们将通过比较不同地区吸烟行为的变化来考察特定地区运动的影响。我们还将研究在2010年大选前政府停止广告支出时，吸烟者的行为和健康发生了什么变化。这项工作将提供必要的信息，以指导今后在国家和区域一级关于反烟草大众媒体支出的决定。

Tobacco control mass media campaigns involve communication which aims to encourage smokers to stop smoking or avoid smoking in front of others, particularly children. The campaigns may be communicated via television, radio, newspapers and/or billboards. It is likely that they contribute to changes in smokers' behaviour and reductions in smoking, and this in turn helps to reduce the number of people suffering the diseases caused by smoking. There is almost no evidence on how effective mass media campaigns in the UK have been, nor on whether this has been money well spent. The lack of UK evidence enabled the government to stop funding mass media campaigns in April 2010. Very recently, however, the government indicated that it might begin such campaigns again. Research on this topic is therefore very timely and would help ascertain how best to do this. This project will measure the effectiveness of individual mass media campaigns, and of different types of campaign, in England and Wales over recent years. We will initially identify the characteristics of individual campaigns, such as whether the campaign aimed to encourage smokers to stop or to protect their children from smoke, its emotional and informational content and style, and how it was delivered (eg whether via television, radio or print media and the balance between the three). Then we will consider how much impact each campaign and campaign type has had by looking at a range of indicators of smoking behaviour in the adult population, such as the proportion of people who smoke, the numbers of smokers trying to stop and the proportion who smoke in the home. We will also measure whether the impact of mass media campaigns reduce the health problems caused by smoking. We will do this by measuring, for example, the number of people admitted to hospital with heart attacks or strokes, and the number of children consulting the GP for respiratory infections. We will use statistical methods that enable us to examine how any changes in these indicators relate to the timing of mass media campaigns. These methods will also allow us to examine whether it is the mass media campaign that is important, or other factors, such as changes in other tobacco policies at the same time, that are responsible. We will look at these changes in smoking behaviour and health in datasets representative of England and Wales as a whole and where available, in data from specific sectors of the population, such as the more socio-economically deprived, to see whether the impact of mass media campaigns is the same in these groups. We will look at the effects of specific regional campaigns by comparing changes in smoking behaviour between regions. We will also look at what changes occurred in smokers behaviour and health at the point when government spend on advertising ceased prior to the election in 2010. This work will provide essential information to guide future decisions on anti-tobacco mass media spend at national and regional levels.