Overview

Principal Investigator: Dr. Jennifer Monahan
Research Assistants: (Lead) Elisabeth Bigsby, Carolyn Brooks, Youyou Chen, Blake Fountain

Background and Overview of the Study:

• In the U.S., low-income teens are heavier smokers than are teens from middle or high-income families.  Rural teens from the South have some of the highest smoking rates in the country, yet we have little rigorous data demonstrating how these teens process anti-smoking messages.
• Smoking messages are “do not do” messages.  Teens are more resistant toward such messages and view these messages as biased.   

    

Research Design:

1. Focus groups were conducted to understand how teens in different subgroups (for example, African American males, white females) perceive messages and make decisions about smoking.
2. An analysis of the content of 500 PSAs was used to link teens’ reasons for smoking to the anti-smoking messages they receive. 
3.  A field experiment was conducted with 325 teens (average age 14.97) to see which existing anti-smoking messages are viewed as least biased by teens.   Teens evaluated personal testimony, second hand smoke, and informative messages. 
4. Teens will be exposed to messages demonstrated to be processed without bias.  Our goal is to demonstrate the efficacy of anti-smoking messages 12 weeks after exposure on teens’ attitudes towards smoking as well as their intent to start smoking or to stop.
5.  A research goal is to demonstrate how risk factors and risk protective factors for low income African American and white adolescents affect their decision making processing style, message processing and likelihood of engaging in smoking behavior. 

 

What We Are Learning:

•  While the teens stressed that they smoke for stress reduction or when they feel bad, our analysis of 500 messages found that the PSAs created for teens do not address stress reduction or smoking to relieve bad feelings such as anger or sadness.  
• Teens found Personal Testimony messages (where a smoker talks about the effects of cigarette addiction on him/her) to be most effective and were seen as least biased.
• Second Hand Smoke messages were rated as most biased and least likely to be effective by all subgroups
• Males and Whites perceived messages to be more biased and less effective than did Females and African Americans.
• African American teens have a much stronger link between smoking and stress than do white teens.