Is There A Hard-To-Reach Audience?
CDC STACKS serves as an archival repository of CDC-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other public health information authored or co-authored by CDC or funded partners. As a repository, CDC STACKS retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
i

Is There A Hard-To-Reach Audience?

Filetype[PDF-1.28 MB]


English

Details:

  • Alternative Title:
    Public Health Rep
  • Personal Author:
  • Description:
    The "hard-to-reach" label has been applied to many different audiences. Persons who have a low socioeconomic status (SES), members of ethnic minorities, and persons who have a low level of literacy often are tagged as "hard-to-reach." The authors identify reasons why these groups have been labelled "hard-to-reach," discuss preconceptions associated with the "hard-to-reach" label, propose alternative conceptualizations of these audiences, and present implications of such conceptualizations for health communication campaigns. Pejorative labels and preconceptions about various groups may lead to depicting these audiences as powerless, apathetic, and isolated. The authors discuss alternative conceptualizations, which highlight the strengths of different audience segments and encourage innovative approaches to the communication process. These alternative conceptualizations emphasize interactive communication, a view of society in which individuals are seen as members of equivalent--albeit different--cultures, and a shift of responsibility for health problems from individuals to social systems. Recommendations for incorporating these alternative concepts into health campaigns include formative research techniques that create a dialogue among participants, more sophisticated segmentation techniques to capture audience diversity, and new roles for mass media that are more interactive and responsive to individual needs.
  • Subjects:
  • Source:
  • Pubmed ID:
    2113680
  • Pubmed Central ID:
    PMCnull
  • Document Type:
  • Place as Subject:
  • Volume:
    105
  • Issue:
    3
  • Collection(s):
  • Main Document Checksum:
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:

Supporting Files

  • No Additional Files
More +

Related Documents

You May Also Like

Checkout today's featured content at stacks.cdc.gov