Health education campaign: positive image or fear-inducing?

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Abstract
Two pilot projects were carried out as the first steps in a project to investigate how the population responds to different approaches to health education/promotion. Overall 51 subjects were interviewed after one exposure to two pictures. The pictures were taken from positive image and fear-inducing TV adverts about smoking. The results show the recall rates in both pilot projects were very high—88% and 78% respectively. Sixty-two percent in the first pilot project and 55% in the second one claimed that they preferred the fear-inducing advert to the positive image advert. Reasons included realism and a clear message. Both smokers and non-smokers believed that the fear inducing advert is likely to have more influence in stopping people smoking. Due to the small sample size in the pilot studies we cannot come to a firm conclusion, but it is possible to say fear-inducing adverts sometimes may work. This finding differs from recent literature claiming that fear-inducing adverts do not work. To confirm these results a better methodology and a further larger investigation is required.

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