Evaluation of two national health education campaigns: The Scottish experience

Abstract

AbstractA quantitative study was conducted to investigate how a survey population responds to different approaches to health education.The main study objective was to compare the survey population's views on two TV advertisements about smoking—a positive image called Puppet and a fear-inducing one called Hospital—produced by the Health Education Board for Scotland (HEBS).Overall, 394 subjects in three different age groups, i.e. 10–14, 16–19 and 40–49, were interviewed by means of a short structured questionnaire containing 18 questions. The distribution of questionnaires and interviews took place in the City of Glasgow among a sample of junior high school students, university students and workplace staff. The study findings showed that both fear-inducing and positive image campaigns achieved the same attention. Overall, recall rates for both were 74 per cent. For all participants, the fear-inducing campaign compared with positive image was preferred—52 per cent versus 16 per cent. This was even true among...