Impact of diet-related cancer prevention messages written with cognitive and affective arguments on message characteristics, stage of change, and self-efficacy
2005
Quintiliani, L.M. | Carbone, E.T.
Objective: To determine if participants reading messages matched to a preferred style of message argument respond more favorably than participants reading unmatched messages. Design: Randomized trial using telephone and in-person surveys and cognitive response interviews. Setting: University campus. Participants: Of 125 initially interested, a convenience sample of 100 university employees completed the study (female: 88%, white: 94%, mean age: 43.7). Intervention(s): Participants read 2 print messages written with cognitive (COG) (fact based) or affective (AFF) (story based) arguments. Main Outcome Measure(s): 7-point Likert scale ratings of message appeal, understandability, persuasiveness, and relevance according to classification into 1 of 4 message groups: COG-AFF (mismatched to affective), AFF-COG (mismatched to cognitive), COG-COG (matched cognitive), and AFF-AFF (matched affective). Analysis: 1-way analysis of variance (P = .05) and systematic review of qualitative interviews. Results: The COG-AFF group consistently gave the lowest ratings to the affective messages and the AFF-COG group generally gave high scores compared with other message groups. Participants also expressed a desire for more factual information. Conclusions and Implications: A combination of cognitive and affective arguments may be appealing to subjects with an affective preference but disliked by individuals who prefer only a fact-based approach. Argument format may be an important message design consideration.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by National Agricultural Library