Government Regulation and the Believability of Prescription Drug Advertising

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Abstract
An experimental study was undertaken to assess the impact of governmental regulation on the believability of prescription drug advertising. The specific variables investigated were symbolic impact and fair balance. Mock advertisements were developed for four tricyclic antidepressant drugs. Symbolic impact was operationalized by portraying the advertisements as originating from U.S. medical journals (i.e., regulated) or Mexican medical journals (i.e., unregulated). Fair balance was operationally defined as the inclusion of a brief summary in the advertisement. A nonrandom sample of twenty-four physicians saw four advertisements representing the four treatment combinations. On a self-administered questionnaire, they indicated their confidence in the information contained in the advertisement. A two-factor, repeated measures randomized block factorial design was employed in the analysis. The results indicated that the presence of fair balance was significantly associated with higher levels of believability; the symbolic impact factor was non-significantly associated with believability.

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