Glen Szczypka¹, Melanie Wakefield, PhD², Sarah Durkin², Yvonne Terry-McElrath, MSA³, George Balch, PhD⁴, Brian Flay, DPhil¹, Susan Anderson⁵, and Sherry Emery, PhD¹. (1) Health Research and Policy Centers, University of Illinois at Chicago, 850 W. Jackson Blvd, Suite 400, Chicago, IL 60607, 312 996-1388, szczypka@uic.edu, (2) Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria, Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer, 100 Drummond Street, Carlton, Victoria, 3053, Australia, (3) Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Survey Research Center, Room 2341, 426 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2321, (4) Balch Associates, 635 Kenilworth St, Oak Park, IL 60304-1129, IL 60304-1129, (5) University of Strathclyde, Centre for Social Marketing, Stenhouse Building, 173 Cathedral Street, Glasgow G4 0RQ, United Kingdom

Previous research has demonstrated that youth in the United States, Australia and Britain respond in similar ways to the same televised anti-smoking ads (Wakefield et al., 2003). We use data from the 615 youth in an international study to further investigate the extent to which there may be individual characteristics that mediate responsiveness to such ads. We focus on differences between youth in ad appraisal and processing according to gender, grade (8th, 10th 12th grade) and level of smoking experience (susceptible non-smokers vs experimenters). A standard protocol was used to compare the responses of students to a sample of the same 50 anti-smoking ads in the US, Australia and Britain. Youth attended group viewing sessions where they viewed a rotation of 10 anti-smoking ads made by either tobacco control agencies, tobacco companies or pharmaceutical companies. Each youth completed a rating form for each viewed ad, and selected the ad that most made them stop and think. One week follow-up telephone calls assessed ad recall and processing. Outcome measures included the likelihood that an ad received high ratings on in-session appraisal measures and at follow-up, unprompted ad recall, discussing the ad with others and having thought more about something in the ad. This study is one of the first to use international data to better understand whether ads may be differently processed by youth according to important personal characteristics, including smoking behaviours, and has implications for the extent to which targeting to population subgroups may or may not be required

Learning Objectives:

• To identify personal charatacteristics that influence youth comprehension and processing of anti-tobacco advertisements;
• To determine the extent to which targeting or tailoring of anti-tobacco advertising to population subgroups may be required

Keywords: Smoking, Youth

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.