Gary R. Heald

The Florida “truth” anti-tobacco media evaluation: design, first year results, and implications for planning future state media evaluations

OBJECTIVES To outline the design and present selected findings from the evaluation of a state counter-advertising, anti-tobacco media campaign. The appropriateness of the design for states developing media evaluations is discussed. DESIGN Four cross sectional, telephone surveys of the 12–17 year old population were used to track and monitor advertising and campaign awareness, confirmed awareness, and receptivity. The Florida baseline and one year surveys were used with two parallel national surveys in a quasi-experimental design to assess attitude and smoking related behaviour change attributable to the campaign. MEASURES Awareness was measured by self report, confirmed awareness by unaided description, and receptivity by self reports of how well advertisements were liked, talked to friends about, and made one think about whether or not to smoke. Eleven attitude and three smoking behaviour items for Florida (treatment) and a national (control) population were compared at baseline and after 12 months. RESULTS Significant increases in ad specific awareness, confirmed, receptivity, and campaign awareness, and confirmed awareness were reached by the sixth week. They continued to rise through the first year. No attitude and only minor behaviour differences were noted between the treatment and comparison populations at baseline. By the end of the first year, Florida youth had stronger anti-tobacco attitudes and better behaviour patterns than the comparison population. CONCLUSIONS The industry manipulation strategy used in the Florida campaign resulted in high rates of recall, significant changes in attitudes/beliefs, and reduced rates of smoking behaviour among youth.

The Acceptability of Credentials Earned Online for Obtaining Employment in the Health Care Professions

A national survey of health care administrators was used to assess the acceptability of a job applicants qualifications that included a degree earned online, partly online, or in a traditional program. A questionnaire was sent in response to job advertisements that were posted in newspapers from 38 metropolitan areas throughout the United States. The respondents were asked to select one of three hypothetical applicants for an advertised position and provide written explanations. The applicant with a traditional degree was overwhelmingly preferred over the applicant holding the degree earned online or partly online. Analyses revealed no statistically significant relationships between acceptability of the type of degree and the respondents’ prior experiences with online courses or their ages.

The industry manipulation attitudes of smokers and nonsmokers.

A cross-sectional random sample was obtained of Florida youth between the ages of 12-17. Data were collected through a telephone survey after obtaining parent and child consent. Industry manipulation attitudes of three groups (self-identified nonsmokers who did not use cigarettes in the past 30 days, self-identified nonsmokers who used cigarettes in the past 30 days, and self-identified smokers who used cigarettes in the past 30 days) were compared. Constraints resulting from the method of data collection resulted in a conservative estimate of the strength of the association between industry manipulation attitudes and smoking behavior.

Effects of Auditory Distraction on Cognitive Processing of Young Adults.

Objective: The effects of interference, competition, and distraction on cognitive processing are unclearly understood, particularly regarding type and intensity of auditory distraction across a variety of cognitive processing tasks. Method: The purpose of this investigation was to report two experiments that sought to explore the effects of types of distraction (4-talker babble; word repetition; combined 4-talker babble with word repetition) when compared to a control condition of quiet on a range of computerized measures (simple reaction time; choice reaction time; serial pattern matching; lexical decision-making; visual selective attention; response reversal and rapid visual scanning; and form discrimination) in 40 young adults (Experiment 1). Results: Few distraction effects were found on cognitive processing at the comfortable loudness level (40dB SL). In Experiment 2, statistically significant differences for choice reaction time and serial pattern matching (working memory) were found in both speed and accuracy when distractions were presented at perceived uncomfortable loudness levels (ULL) and compared with conditions of quiet and comfortable loudness level (40dB SL). Conclusion: Cognitive resource allocation models may be useful in interpreting the effects of auditory distraction on cognitive-linguistic processing, and this model may help to explain differential distraction effects in clinical populations with attention deficits. (J. of Att. Dis. 2007; 10(4) 398-409)

Attacking the Drug Norm: Effects of the 1976–77 Florida Drug Abuse TV Campaign

This report summarizes an evaluation on the impact of the 1976–77 Florida Drug Abuse television campaign. The campaign was targeted at middle and upper class individuals. The evaluation included telephone interviews with 960 male and female heads-of-household in the Tallahassee area. The article reports audience viewing frequency of the TV campaign announcements, demographic and attitudinal differences between viewers and non-viewers, plus viewing and reation differences between target and non-target audience members. Conclusions and recommendations for future campaigns are suggested.

Malpractice and the Communication Consultant: A Proactive Approach

This commentary provides communication practitioners with an overview of legal and ethical issues facing individuals who market themselves as professional communication consultants. We introduce the tort of negligence, discuss its impact on professionals, review various ethical principles underlying the law, and outline court-supported practices that professional consultants might use to help protect their clients and themselves. Throughout this discussion, we argue that an understanding of legal principles and practices can enhance consultant-client relationships. This in turn increases the probability of successful consulting engagements.

Tobacco and alcohol advertisements in popular African‐American and general audiences magazines

This study examines samples of fourteen popular magazines. Comparisons are made between the tobacco and alcohol advertisements in magazines that target African‐American versus general audiences. The content analyses indicate that African‐American magazines carry higher numbers and concentrations of ads promoting health‐risk products. Results also indicate that tobacco and alcohol targeting strategies may well go beyond racial and ethnic differences.

Commercial satellite telecommunications and national development: Lessons from Peru☆

Abstract This article summarizes the major development lessons and issues derived from an evaluation of the Rural Communication Services Project conducted in Peru from June 1982 to February 1987. The evaluation aimed to provide development planners and donor agency officials with credible information concerning the impact and costs of commercial satellite telecommunications, emphasizing telephone and teleconferencing services in remote rural areas.

Generative naming in aphasia during conditions of quiet and cafeteria noise distraction

Aphasia theory is evolving to include aspects of cognitive resource allocation including the performance of individuals during dual task paradigms as well as during interference, competition, and distraction (Erickson, Goldinger, & LaPointe, 1996; LaPointe & Erickson, 1991; McNeil, 1997; Murray, 1999). Signal extraction from competing stimuli has been shown to be influenced by such factors as arousal, motivation, effort, task demands, and nervous system integrity. Limited capacity cognitive systems require parsing and distribution of selective attention among the cascade of attended and unattended stimuli that surround communicators, but few studies of individuals with aphasia have considered or controlled efficiency of these stimulus variables during communication attempts.

Intrasubject variability of cognitive and word retrieval performance across six sessions

Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USAA burgeoning interest appears to be developing in understandingthe nature and interactions between aphasia and nonlinguistic cogni-tive factors such as attention and working memory (Caspari, Parkin-son, LaPointe, & Katz, 1998; Erickson, Goldfinger, & LaPointe, 1996;Helm-Estabrooks, 2002; LaPointe & Erickson, 1991; Murray, 1999).Others (Hoffmann, 2001; Hochstenbach, Mulder, van Limbeek,Donders, & Schoonderwaldt, 1998) have noted the strong presence ofcognitive decline after stroke and commented on how marked slownessof information processing could impact linguistic performance.Some researchers (McNeil et al., 1991) have integrated disturbancesof cognitive processing into cognitive resource allocation models ofaphasia and suggested that the intrasubject variability of languageperformance seen in aphasia might be explained by fluctuating cog-nitive performance. Disturbances in word retrieval and lexical-se-mantic processing remains one of the hallmarks of aphasia andexplanations of variability across these domains also have been enig-matic (Moreno, Buchanan, & Van Orden, 2002; Nespoulous, Villiard,& Lecours, 1989). Despite the growing archive of research on cogni-tive-linguistic interactions, the sources of variability in aphasia remainelusive and unclearly understood. More elementally, the nature andrelationship of intrasubject variability on cognitive and word retrievaltasks across repeatedsessions of assessmentis relatively unstudied. Thepurpose of this study is twofold:1. To describe the variability of four individuals with aphasia on in-depth tasks of word retrieval and cognitive processing performanceacross six sessions of assessment.2. To explore the pattern of correlation and variability among wordretrieval and cognitive processing tasks across six sessions to deter-mine if changes in word retrieval across test sessions can be pre-dicted by changes in cognitive processing performance.MethodsParticipantsFour individuals with aphasia were recruited for this study andvolunteered to participate in six assessment sessions each. Our parti-cipants all suffered a single, left hemisphere thromboembolic CVA andwere mildly to moderately impaired in language as measured by theWestern Aphasia Battery and other standardized measures of languageimpairment. Participants were classified as having non-fluent, Broca’s-type aphasia. They ranged in age from 34 to 66 with a mean of 58.6.All were right handed pre-morbidly, were judged to be neurologicallystable beyond the acute epoch, and ranged in time post onset from 3months to several years. All participants were male.MeasuresSerialperformanceontheprinciplemeasuresincludedthefollowing:Cognitive measure: A computerized assessment protocol was se-lectedthatmeasuresthefollowingcognitiveskillsinthevisualmodality:• simple reaction time• choice reaction time• serial pattern matching• lexical discrimination• visual selective attention• response reversal with rapid visual scanning• abstract form discriminationThis measure has been standardized on a large group of non-braindamaged subjects and a variety of clinical populations (Miller, 1990;1995). The battery measures and records reaction times in millisecondsas well as accuracy across the 10 subtests of the full battery. Signaldetection analysis and accuracy corrected for false positives is alsorecorded and summarized.Word retrieval measure: The Test of Adolescent/Adult WordFinding (TAWF) (German, 1990). The complete TAWF batterymeasures naming nouns, verbs, sentence completion, naming to de-scription, and naming categories. Accuracy as well as latency of re-sponses is recorded.The measures were administered in counterbalanced order. The sixsessions for each participant were accomplished with approximatelyweekly sessions over a six-week period.ResultsFig. 1 presents the group means for the word retrieval scores (totalperformance for all TAWF subtests) as well as the group means for allof the CalCap cognitive processing subtests across the six sessions ofadministration. Description and analysis of performance across theindividual subtests and for individual subjects also will be presented.Spearman’s coefficient of correlation for word retrieval (groupTAWF total scores) and group CalCap reaction times was ).886(p = .028). Spearman’s r value for word retrieval and CalCap accuracywas ).08 (n.s.).