Details:

Alternative Title:
Prev Chronic Dis
Personal Author:
McDonald, Paul W
Description:
Introduction

The population impact of programs designed to develop healthy eating behaviors is limited by the number of people who use them.  Most public health providers and researchers rely on purchased mass media, which can be expensive, on public service announcements, or clinic-based recruitment, which can have limited reach. Few studies offer assistance for selecting high-outreach and low-cost strategies to promote healthy eating programs. The purpose of this study was 1) to determine whether classified newspaper advertising is an effective and efficient method of recruiting participants into a healthy eating program and 2) to determine whether segmenting messages by transtheoretical stage of change would help engage individuals at all levels of motivation to change their eating behavior.

Methods

For 5 days in 1997, three advertisements corresponding to different stages of change were placed in a Canadian newspaper with a daily circulation of 75,000.

Results

There were 282 eligible people who responded to newspaper advertisements, and the cost was Can $1.11 (U.S. $0.72) per recruit. This cost compares favorably with the cost efficiency of mass media, direct mail, and other common promotional methods. Message type was correlated with respondent's stage of change, and this correlation suggested that attempts to send different messages to different audience segments were successful.

Discussion

Classified advertisements appear to be a highly cost-efficient method for recruiting a diverse range of participants into healthy eating programs and research about healthy eating.


Subject:
[+]
Adult
Advertising As Topic
Costs And Cost Analysis
Feeding Behavior
Female
Healthy People Programs
Humans
Male
Newspapers
Program Evaluation

Source:
Prev Chronic Dis. 2007; 4(2).
Document Type:
Journal Article
Collection(s):
Preventing Chronic Disease
Main Document Checksum:
[+]
urn:sha256:d197557643398c1fe09df34cb9f6430811e93b06929c0f17a09d0ce87be5b434
File Type:

Supporting Files

• 	license.txt	txt
  	PCD42A26.nxml	txt

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