Abstract
This research is focused on the question of deciding what to say in a (health) communication campaign. The goal is to search for ways of selecting/tailoring effective campaign messages which are persuasive for the targeted audiences. Accordingly, by considering Social Judgement Theory in the foundation of Integrated Behavior Model; two variables, belief strength and involvement are proposed with a method to predict the persuasiveness of campaign messages. When the people have strong beliefs and high involvements, a message that does not match with the most important behavioral determinant should be used in the campaign. However, when the people have weak beliefs, a message matching with the most important behavioral determinant should be used without considering the involvement level. These hypotheses are tested in the field of health communication on (cervical cancer) HPV vaccine acceptance and all accepted. CATI is used to collect data on surveys. The study sample, which is derived through a method close to probability sampling, is consisted of mothers who live in Istanbul/Turkey and have at least one 11-26-year-old daughter(N=145). Multiple linear regressions, decision trees (CHAID) and ANOVA are used for the analysis.
Highlights
The era we find ourselves today from the perspective of history of communication campaigns can be named as the era of conditional effects
The means of the persuasivenesses of the following messages did not differ significantly among the segments (p>, 05): “Protect your daugter against cervical cancer at an early age” “You can consider the importance of being protected against cervical cancer for both yourself and your family but your children can’t” “Do your part to prevent cervical cancer” “Strengthen your daughter for the life” Figure[1]: Visualizations of the persuasivenesses of proposed messages in each segment
Inthe context of our case study, we have divided the sample into four different segments, due to the high amount of the unknown about Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines yet it may be more appropriate to target three segments in such a communication campaign: The mothers who, while having many unknown information about HPV vaccine, are surely regarding the vaccine as unnecessary for their daughters and not wanting to get their daughters HPV-vaccinated
Summary
The era we find ourselves today from the perspective of history of communication campaigns can be named as the era of conditional effects. A common mission of the researches in the field of (health) communication campaigns since 1980 has been to examine the conditional effects of various variables on attitude, intention or behaviors Communication campaigns are believed to be very successful in raising awareness towards issues, ideas or behaviors. When it comes to changing (or effecting) the behaviours, the effectiveness of communication campaigns still tend to remain low which is mostly the real goal (ASCOR, 2007). A possible way believed to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of (health) communication campaigns (towards behaviors) is the customization. Customization of communication campaigns requires paying attention or analyzing the specific characteristics (demographic, psychographic, cognitive and especially behavioral) of individuals, groups or much larger audiences and determining/providing most relevant and strategic communication components (such as medium, message content, message appeal...) in order to meet the needs and expectations of these audiences related with a certain behavior and context (Rimer & Kreuter, 2006, p. 184)
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