ABSTRACTS

Volume 10, Number 5
July-August 2005

Vol. 10, Number 5: Contents | Editorial | Abstracts

Communication Strategy for Implementing Community IMCI
    Neil Ford A1, Abimbola Williams A1, Melanie Renshaw A1, John Nkum A2

A1 UNICEF, Eastern and Southern Africa Regional office (ESARO), Nairobi, Kenya
A2 Nkum Associates, Accra, Ghana

In resource-poor developing countries, significant improvements in child survival, growth, and development can be made by: (a) shifting from sectoral programmes (for example, in nutrition or immunization) to holistic strategies such as the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) and (b) improving household and community care and health-seeking practices as a priority, while concurrently strengthening health systems and the skills of health professionals. This article focuses on household and community learning, and proposes a communication strategy for implementing community IMCI (c-IMCI) that is based on human rights principles such as inclusion, participation, and self-determination. Rather than attempt to change the care practices and health-seeking behaviour of individuals through the design and delivery of messages alone, it proposes an approach that is based on community engagement and discussion to create the social conditions in which individual change is possible. The strategy advocates for the integration of sectoral programmes rather than the development of new holistic programmes, so that integrated programmes are created from “multiple entry points.” As integration occurs, the participatory communication processes that are used in sectoral programmes can be enriched and combined, improving the capacity of governments and agencies to engage community members effectively in a process of learning and action related to child health and development.

News Media Tracking of Tobacco Control: A Review of Sampling Methodologies
   W. Douglas Evans A1 and Alec Ulasevich A2

A1 RTI International, Washington, DC, USA
A2 American Institutes for Research, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

News media tracking can be used to understand the content of news coverage and quantify its influence on public opinion and the social environment. We hypothesize that a parsimonious sampling of public health news coverage can gather statistically equivalent information to capture a census of coverage. We tested two general approaches to sampling. First, we randomly selected articles within a timeframe. Second, we randomly selected dates during 2000. None of these strategies showed a substantial deviation from the 2000 census of articles. We conclude that sampling coverage can produce estimates statistically equivalent to a census. Researchers should utilize coverage sampling.

Talk is Cheap: The Tobacco Companies' Violations of Their Own Cigarette Advertising Code
     Jeffrey Jensen Arnett A1

A1 University of Maryland, University Park, Maryland, USA

In two studies, adolescents and adults were shown a series of cigarette advertisements and asked to respond to a variety of questions concerning aspects of the Cigarette Advertising and Promotion Code, specifically, their perceptions of the ages of the models in the ads and of whether the ads depicted smoking as essential to sexual attraction or essential to success. For many of the ads, especially ads for brands most popular among youth, a majority of the participants perceived the models to be less than 25 years old. A majority also perceived many of the ads to depict smoking as essential to sexual attraction or essential to success. Thus, despite their public pledge, the tobacco companies routinely violate a variety of aspects of the Cigarette Advertising and Promotion Code.

Moving Toward a Theory of Normative Influences: How Perceived Benefits and Similarity Moderate the Impact of Descriptive Norms on Behaviors
    Rajiv N. Rimal A1, Maria K. Lapinski A2, Rachel J. Cook A1, Kevin Real A3

A1 Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
A2 Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
A3 University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

In recent years researchers have focused attention on understanding the role of normative factors in influencing behaviors. Although there is some evidence to support the idea that restructuring normative beliefs can result in behavior change, the norms literature is largely silent about how or why this influence occurs. The theory of normative social behavior describes the moderators of the descriptive norm-behavior relationship. Through a 2 (descriptive norms: high or low)×2 (perceived benefits: high or low)×2 (similarity: high or low) between-subjects experiment(N = 174), we tested whether these cognitive mechanisms moderated the norms-behavior link. Results indicated that descriptive norms do not exert a direct influence on behavior. Rather, perceived benefits moderated the relationship between descriptive norms and behavioral intention and perceived similarity moderated the relation between descriptive norms and self-efficacy.

The Use of a Telephone-Based Communication Tool by Low-Income Substance Abusers
     Maghboeba Mosavel A1

A1 Center for Reducing Health Disparities CWRU, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

This article does not have an abstract.

Communicating HIV and AIDS, What Works? A Report on the Impact Evaluation of Soul City's Fourth Series
     Susan Goldstein A1, Shereen Usdin A2, Esca Scheepers A2, Garth Japhet A2

A1 Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication, School of Public Health, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
A2 Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication, Johannesburg, South Africa

This article describes the evaluation of the HIV/AIDS communication aspect of the multi media Soul City health promotion intervention in South Africa. The intervention consists of a television and radio drama and print material. The evaluation was multifaceted with a before and after national survey and a national qualitative study. In the before and after survey change was measured and then multiple regression analysis was performed to assess the variables associated with the change.

The qualitative study consisted of focus group discussions, which were analysed thematically. The studies show that there are numerous instances of community change and how the change is mediated at the community level. The studies also describe the change at a number of levels of the described behaviour change model for individuals.

Book Review

A Review of: “A. Singhal, M. Cody, E. Rogers, & M. Sabido (2003). Entertainment-Education and Social Change”: A review of Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Elaine M. Murphy