Evaluating the effectiveness of antismoking framing in mass media campaigns

Abstract

Background The harm of smoking tobacco remained one of the greatest health impacts and estimated costs to global population. Therefore, I reviewed the studies that had individual aspect of psychological theories, perceived susceptibility, individual’s attitude, perceived norms and self-efficacy as the prediction for the possible effects of media effects.

Methods A systematic review was performed for evaluating the possible effects of antismoking framing in mass media. Specific keywords were used to search for all relevant studies from 1946 to25 April 2013 in PubMed, Google Scholar, and Microsoft Academic Search. I included articles about media campaign that promoted the target outcome, cognitive-behavioral change. I excluded any mass media campaign that had not explicitly identify the theories that present their message creation and campaign strategies. Last, I excluded any trial or intervention study of theory-based framing if the study did not examine the effect of antismoking message on a mass media campaign.

Results 13 out of 1670 articles that described the antismoking framing in mass media campaigns were included in the systematic review. The review studies included five cross-sectional, four pretest-posttest design, three longitudinal, and onetime series design studies. In 9 out of 13 my literature articles, fear appeal was applied to present a risk of disease, and diverted the audiences to have smoking cessation and prevention, so that was categorized to have the factor of perceived susceptibility and individuals’ attitude against smoking.

Discussion Our systematic review clarified practicable structure of framing message for reduction of smoking prevalence and its outcome measure of effectiveness. It lacks of a fine discrimination to access all the pathways and determinants of the major psychological models, so I could not measure the independent effect and interaction of the four psychological factors. Other limitations are recall bias and response bias. In Hong Kong, it was recommended to create antismoking message with the factor of perceived norm and self-efficacy in targeting low SES, minor races or disadvantage groups.