EMBEDDED ANTIALCOHOL MESSAGES ON COMMERCIAL TELEVISION - WHAT TEENAGERS PERCEIVE

Purpose: Educators and producers should take advantage of television's potential for reaching audiences with Television health-related messa ges. This paper investigates adolescents' perceptions of an anti-alcoh ol message embedded in commercial television programming. Methods: Ove r 900 8th and 9th graders from New York suburbs completed surveys meas uring interest, knowledge, and credibility of either an episode of The Cosby Show or Family Matters. Both episodes had an antialcohol messag e embedded within their plots. Results: Overall, students gave high ra tes of interest and credibility and received high scores for knowledge for both episodes. Girls and African-American students had higher sco res, on average, for interest and credibility. White students had the highest knowledge scores. Students with different television viewing e xperiences did not differ in their perceptions of the episodes; howeve r, students who had previously seen the episodes gave higher levels of interest and credibility. Conclusion: These data indicate that youngs ters are receptive to antialcohol messages within commercial televisio n episodes. The results also suggest that similarities and differences between a viewer and a televised character relate to differences in p erception. However, much more research should be done in order to gene ralize these findings to other audiences, episodes, programs, and heal th-related messages.