Physical Activity Messages - What Do Youth with Disabilities Think

There is no known research examining the use of messages to motivate youth with disabilities (YWD) to engage in physical activity (PA). Guided by the SIABM, the purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of PA messages on YWDs attitudes and intentions, and to consider factors related to message effectiveness. Sixty YWD were randomized to view one of three PA messages. Attitudes and intentions were assessed at baseline and immediately following viewing one of the three messages. Participants also completed a message evaluation questionnaire. Repeated measures ANOVA indicated that attitudes and intentions toward PA did not change significantly following message viewing. Attention was the only significant predictor of intention post-viewing (p=.001). The relationship between message attention and PA intentions warrants further exploration. Research among a sample with lower baseline attitudes and intentions would be valuable to inform the development of effective PA messages for YWD

How addictive frames can undermine perceived control

Many varieties of consumption are often mischaracterized as “addictive,” such as social media use, chocolate consumption, shopping, and viewing pornography, even though considerable evidence indicates that they are not intrinsically addictive. This research examines whether labeling everyday products and activities as “addictive,” a common occurrence in modern media, popular culture, and marketing, can actually influence consumption. Given the consistent use of warning-based interventions related to established addictions (e.g., cigarettes, drugs, gambling), there exists an implicit assumption that warning consumers about the addictiveness of freely available products and generally socially acceptable activities will reduce the behavior. However, the potentially negative consequences of labeling non-addictive behaviors as addictive remain unclear. It was predicted and found that explicitly framing everyday consumption behavior as being addictive reduces consumers’ perceived control over the focal behavior resulting in increased consumption. Specifically, across twelve studies, consumers led to believe that consumption activities including eating chocolate and granola, shopping, using social media, and viewing pornography are addictive increases that behavior due to a decrease in perceived control. The effect of the addictive frame was not found to occur for purely virtuous and arguably less desirable and enjoyable foods (e.g., peas). Further, the effect does not spillover to other similar foods (e.g., M&Ms versus Skittles), meaning the effect is not simply a result of inducing a general lack of perceived control over all activities. Finally, boosting control by reminding consumers of situations where they had control over their own food consumption attenuated the effect of existing addictive beliefs. Alternative explanations such as the influence of a diminished sense of personal responsibility (via guilt), the forbidden fruit effect (via desire and excitement), affect regulation, and descriptive social norms were also tested and ruled out. This research has implications for how these behaviors are portrayed in marketing communications, the media, and public policy, and can be used to develop more effective interventions for at-risk consumers.2019-06-06T00:00:00

Determining the structure and effects of message sensation value in threatening anti-smoking adverts : a young adult perspective

There is no doubt that anti-smoking campaigns help with other anti-smoking policy to reduce the number of smokers in the UK and indeed globally, through their cumulative effects on their target audiences. However, the effectiveness and impact of such campaigns vary according to several elements, influenced by the design and delivery of such communications.Whilst the majority of anti-smoking adverts use visual-threat-based appeals, the effects of which have been validated in changing attitudes of smokers, the structural components of such campaigns and identifying their effects remain largely unexplored. The concept of Message Sensation Value (MSV) relates to the structural components of communication content and has found some traction in understanding social marketing campaigns. How MSV relates to anti-smoking attitude change, however, remains unresolved and therefore our knowledge on the structural components of anti- smoking MSV and their influence in attitude change is limited. This study seeks to address this key knowledge gap.This research therefore aims to determine the structure and role of MSV features in anti- smoking adverts and specifically within threatening appeals, given their prevalence and validated utility. This study examines the experience of young adult smokers and their responses in terms of emotive reaction, perceived believability and perceived effectiveness using a qualitative interview-based study design. It integrates an interpretive phenomenological orientation embedded in a Dimensional Qualitative Research (DQR) approach. The DQR approach is used to enhance the systematic and comprehensive classification of themes arising from perceptions towards anti-smoking stimuli and in doing so enables the deconstruction of the MSV into its constituent components. DQR enables advertising scholars to decode stimuli on the basis of BASIC IDS, an acronym based on Behaviour, Affect, Sensation, Image, Cognition, Interpersonal relation, Drug and Sociocultural modalities or dimensions. Addressing such adverts which contain threat appeals and MSV features, it is the first research to address MSV features in anti-smoking advert, which include threat appeals by a qualitative approach with a phenomenological orientation. For the first time, two phases of data analysis thematic analysis and dimensional qualitative research are used together to get a holistic picture of smokers’ experience with such content and their reaction according to such experience.The findings reveal that the experiences of smokers (both past and present) with anti- smoking adverts contain some MSV features, and threat appeals vary in their type and level of threat. Young adult smokers found adverts with some high MSV features (i.e., intense scenes, unexpected format, surprise end and the action showed or described) when combined with high threat appeals (physical, social and death threat appeals). This negative and scary content in these adverts made them experience mainly fear and other negative emotions, which led them to rate anti-smoking adverts with high MSV features and high threat appeals as more believable and more effective. The results indicate that MSV features in threatening televised anti-smoking adverts work to enhance the role of threat appeals effect by intensifying the adverts arousal effect on smokers, influencing emotional response, and facilitating attention. This gives the adverts with such style and content have a positive impact on how young adults’ smokers perceived their believability and some aspects of perceived effectiveness but with no firm intention to stop smoking. It may be that smokers found anti-smoking adverts not enough to make them stop smoking because of several reasons related to smokers or anti-smoking adverts, such as addiction, social relationships with friends and other students, and sociocultural aspects(i.e. age gap) since some adverts target other age groups like older people and parents, not young adults

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationNarrative persuasion research has identified two promising features that could influence behavior: (a) whether the character lives or dies (narrative outcomes) and (b) whether the character overcomes key barriers (narrative barriers). The current study manipulated both narrative features in a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine intervention - delivered via an online panel study - targeted to young adult women aged 18 to 26 (N = 246). Participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (survival vs. death) 2 (social vs. structural barriers) between subjects experiment. Compared to death narratives, survival narratives increased narrative plausibility, consistency, and coverage, and yielded greater HPV vaccination self-efficacy and lower perceived barriers to action. Narrative features interacted, such that survival narratives featuring social barriers led to greater transportation into the story than other combinations. Moderated mediation analysis was employed to test 10 theoretically-derived mediators, including transportation, four factors of believability, perceived barriers, perceived benefits, risk susceptibility, risk severity, and self-efficacy. Two variables emerged as mediators of the narrative message-behavioral intention relationship: transportation and risk susceptibility. The results provide an important first step toward building a more comprehensive and integrated model of narrative persuasion processing. These findings also have practical applications for guiding narrative public health message design in cervical cancer prevention campaigns. Results also highlight the clinically significant impact that narrative-based interventions can serve toward lessening the incidence of cervical cancer through an increase in HPV vaccination for young women. Directions for future work in the development of narrative persuasion and cancer communication are discussed

Interlocutors-Related and Hearer-Specific Causes of Misunderstanding: Processing Strategy, Confirmation Bias and Weak Vigilance

Noises, similarities between words, slips of the tongue, ambiguities, wrong or false beliefs, lexical deficits, inappropriate inferences, cognitive overload, non-shared knowledge, topic organisation or focusing problems, among others, may cause misunderstanding. While some of these are structural factors, others pertain to the speaker or to both the speaker and the hearer. In addition to stable factors connected with the interlocutors′ communicative abilities, cultural knowledge or patterns of thinking, other less stable factors, such as their personal relationships, psychological states or actions motivated by physiological functions, may also result in communicative problems. This paper considers a series of further factors that may eventually lead to misunderstanding, and which solely pertain to the hearer: processing strategy, confirmation bias and weak vigilance

From Products to Politics: Understanding the Effectiveness of a Celebrity Political Endorsement

From Scott Baio’s endorsement of Donald Trump to Sarah Silverman’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders and subsequent rejection of the “Bernie or Bust” crowd at the DNC, celebrities have habitually inserted themselves into the political sphere, however, there has been little empirical research on celebrity endorsements of political candidates. Rooted in branding theory, this study seeks to understand the effectiveness of celebrity political endorsements by utilizing advertising effectiveness models. The primary model, derived from work done by Amos, Holmes, and Strutton (2008), translates source factors of a celebrity product endorser to those of a celebrity candidate endorser, such as credibility, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. While in traditional advertising research, effectiveness is measured by outcomes such as brand attitude, and intention for product purchase, this study defines effectiveness in terms of attitudes toward the candidate, endorsement believability, recognition, and willingness to engage in electoral and online civic behaviors. After providing demographic information and information about digital media use and partisanship, participants were provided with a social media post, allegedly from a famous actor, endorsing a fictitious candidate and were asked to rate the actor on 21 attributes of a good endorser (source factors) and answer questions relating to their identification with the celebrity, perceptions of the celebrity-candidate fit, and their perceptions of the candidate’s viability in the election. They were subsequently asked to evaluate the candidate, the endorsement’s believability, recognize information from the endorsement, and indicate how likely they were to perform nine civic behaviors for the candidate. The data suggest that the endorser effectiveness model used by advertising researchers is useful for understanding the source factors and other considerations upon which celebrity political endorsement effectiveness is predicated. The study found that source factors vary in effectiveness between attitude, cognitive, and behavioral measures, leading to the conclusion that celebrity endorsers with different characteristics may be useful to political campaigns depending upon desired voter outcomes, particularly with regard to time during a campaign cycle

A Narrative Account of Argumentation

In this dissertation I attempt to accomplish three goals. The first goal is to develop a narrative account of argumentation. I show that storytelling serves as a legitimate mode of argumentation. I develop an account of narrative argument based on generalized features of narrative and a conception of argument that is rhetorical and in line with Charles Willards notion of argument as an interaction. I identify features of narrative argument that enable narrative to function as an argument and thus to provide reasons for a claim in the context of disagreement. As a result, I synthesize literatures on narrative and argumentation to provide a definition of narrative argument. The second goal of the dissertation is to argue for maintaining the narrative as a process without reconstructing the narrative into the dominant model of argument. In this part of the dissertation, I elaborate on the definition of narrative argument and argue that narrative argument must be understood as a process, and not as a product of argument. While the product view focuses on the form and structure of an argument as being linear, explicit, and containing premises and a conclusion, and treats arguments as things, the process view focuses on the whole act of arguing, thus highlighting the importance of the context of argumentation and the people involved. In support of this thesis, I show that reducing the narrative into premises and a conclusion is problematic because it deprives it of some of its persuasive force. Reducing the narrative into a product removes the real argumentpart of which is implicitfrom its context, its unique situation, and its complex social setting. The third goal of this dissertation is to develop an account of argument evaluation that is suitable for narrative argument understood as a process. I offer an account of how to evaluate narratives using the virtuous audience, combining theories of virtue argumentation and rhetorical audiences. In sum, this dissertation provides a definition of narrative argument, stipulates the conditions of narrative arguments that make them successful, and offers ways of evaluating the narrative while maintaining its form as a process

Targeting risk images to reduce alcohol misuse in young people: Development of an intervention based on the social reaction pathway in the Prototype Willingness Model

Background: Alcohol misuse is associated with a number of health risks and harms that may be particularly detrimental to adolescents. Existing interventions for which there is evidence of effectiveness are time and cost intensive. Brief interventions or classroom delivered programmes are often ineffective, possibly due to their basis in rational models of behaviour. Young people’s risk taking behaviour may be better understood from a dual process perspective, which assumes two routes to behaviour; one rational and planned, the other a faster, reactive and spontaneous route. The Prototype Willingness Model (PWM) assumes that for adolescents, reactive behaviour is a result of the contemplation of ‘prototypes’ or widely held social images about the type of person who engages in a risk behaviour. Evaluation of these prototypes influences ‘willingness’ or an openness to the opportunity to engage a specific behaviour through a process of social comparison. Aim: The PWM has been applied to numerous risk behaviours and populations but there is less research in relation to its application to teenage drinking in a UK context. Thus, the overall aim of the thesis was to develop an intervention targeting constructs in the social reaction pathway in the PWM in order to explore its application to understanding and preventing alcohol misuse in young people. Method: This project used mixed methods and had a multiphase design with separate stages. A framework to guide development of a theory based intervention was proposed. This seven step framework built on existing guidance from Intervention Mapping and the Medical Research Council. The findings from each step are set out below. Findings: Step One: Evidence from a literature review suggested that the social reaction pathway in the PWM may be an appropriate theoretical basis for an intervention to reduce alcohol misuse in young people. Much of the evidence base comes from the USA or from studies that use college students. Step Two: Four focus groups were carried out with 27 11-13 and 16-17 year olds and analysed using deductive thematic analysis. The findings from this study show that young people in this sample were able to clearly describe the characteristics of social images (i.e. prototypes) in relation to alcohol. Step Three: The results of an online questionnaire completed by 182 young people supported the application of the PWM in an alcohol misuse intervention aimed at UK adolescents. The results indicated the intervention should use behaviour change techniques (BCTs) that target prototype perceptions with a focus on characteristics related to sociability. Step Four: The intervention was developed drawing the findings of steps one to three. Four BCTs reflecting the processes in the PWM were incorporated into an intervention in the format of an online quiz. Step Five: Fifteen expert participants gave feedback on the planned intervention in a Delphi study that took place in two questionnaire rounds. Findings suggested support for the content and mode of delivery and suggestions were made for improvements to the intervention. Step Six: Results of a questionnaire completed by 102 teachers and parents, and 16 think aloud interviews with young people found favourable responses to the format and content of the intervention. Feedback suggested that further development may be needed in terms of challenging coolness and peer pressure and in how plans to avoid drinking might be enacted. Step Seven: The findings were integrated and five intervention development priorities were identified from the studies with experts, teachers, parents and young people. In addition, nine overarching meta-themes were identified across all studies, which are discussed in light of their implications for interventions and future research. Conclusion: Drawing on these findings, a plan for intervention based on the social reaction pathway of the PWM, named the Alcohol Smart Quiz (ASQ) is presented. Strengths and weaknesses of the ASQ and the guiding framework used to develop it are discussed. The project highlighted the benefits of taking a clearly stated mixed methods approach, and shows the importance of early qualitative work in exploring theoretical constructs in intervention design