Health Campaign Channels Tradeoffs Among Reach, Specificity, and Impact

Abstract

The authors examined comparative effects of jive health campaign channels used in the Stanford Five-City Multifactor Risk Reduction Project. Three distinct criterion variables were evaluated: (a) reach, measured as the number of messages intervention community residents remembered; (b) specificity, assessed by examining whether the campaign dzjkrentially reached those w/w were already knowledgeable and practicing cardiovascular disease risk reduction; and (c) impact, defined as the amount of knowledge gained during the 5-year campaign. Path analyses revealed that reach was highest for tip sheets. Spec$city was highestfor booklets and then television programs. Newspaper messages appeared to have the most impact, followed by booklets and television public seruice announcements, tip sheets, and finally, television programs. Channels varied according to reach, specificity, and impact, andeachof these criteria were distinct. No channel was optimal for all three of the outcome measures, suggesting that channel selection involves tradeofi among dz&%ent types of effects. ealth communication campaigns that use multiple channels to deliver messages are more effective in changing behavior than H those that rely on a single modality ( B l o b et al.

Strategies and Practices in Community—Based Campaigns Promoting Nutrition and Physical Activity

“…Concept development and message pretesting were limited in the reports examined. Analyses of communication channel use, a critically important component of formative research (Schooler et aL, 1998), were also uncommon. We suspect that this neglect reflects the limited resources typically available to campaign planners.…”

“…Target audiences' perceptions of the campaign's messages, the costs and benefits attributed to recommended changes, and the ease of adopting the recommendations need to be assessed. Identification and analysis of the communication channels most suitable for reaching members of the target audience are also necessary (Schooler, Chaffee, Flora, & Roser, 1998). An assessment of those features of the immediate environment and wider social context that support and that interfere with the adoption of recommendations is another basic requirement (Hastings, MacFadyen, & Anderson, 2000).…”

A Meeting of Broadcast and Post-Broadcast Media in the 2004 American Presidential Election

“…The two types of political media outlets are linked in that one predicts the other, but their influences vary widely within the citizenry. These findings point to a much more complex picture of how reach and specificity as concepts which define campaign media influence (see Schooler et al, 1998) will continue to play out in political elections. Prior (2007) argued for a clean shift from reach to specificity in describing the movement from a broadcast to a post-broadcast age, but those concepts that best define each age (reach and specificity) remain relevant and intricately connected to one another in American political elections.…”

“…Although the shift from reach to specificity in television may be ongoing (see Schooler, Chaffee, Flora, & Roser, 1998), this alteration of the media landscape does not mean the positive benefits we associate with the broadcast tradition (i.e., reach) are gone entirely from the political realm. More specifically, this article argues that political debates serve an important reach function in political elections.…”

The Message or the Channel: An Experimental Design of Consumers' Perceptions of a Local Food Message and the Media Channels Used to Deliver the Information

“…While much research has been published about the effectiveness of utilizing multiple media channels for marketing purposes (Mulhern, 2009;Schooler, Chaffee, Flora, & Roser, 1998), little has been published about which media channel has been most effective for delivering specific information to consumers. Studies have established that communicators have had many media channels to choose from when implementing a marketing strategy; however, what consumers choose to do and how they process the messages received through those media channels has not been discussed sufficiently (Webster & Ksiazek, 2012).…”