HIV+&+AIDS

The elaboration likelihood model, developed by R.E. Petty and J. T. Cacioppo, addresses how attitudes are formed and changed after a person is exposed to a message with important and meaningful content. In the study titled “Black Youth’s Personal Involvement in the HIV/AIDS Issue: Does the Public Service Announcement Still Work?” researchers set out to find whether crucial health messages in Public Service Announcement’s changed the thought processes or attitudes of African American youth that were exposed to the PSA’s.
 * __Black Youth's Personal Involvement in the HIV/AIDS Issue: Does the Public Service Announcement Still Work? __** **by Lauren Greer **

 In this specific research study, informing African American youth about HIV/AIDS was the goal. The spread of HIV/AIDS is a worldwide issue, and the study sought to find out if the persuasive communication in the PSA’s were able to change the attitudes and behaviors toward HIV/AIDS. A main focus of health communication experts has been how to develop health messages that bring about changes in the target audience’s perceptions of their personal risk and what they could do to protect themselves. The PSA’s shown to the African American youth were shown to get their attention and to bring about awareness concerning the issue. As said in the research study, “Elaboration is often operationalized as message involvement (Karson & Korgaonkar, 2001). Two factors increase the potential to produce this elaboration: (1) motivation, e.g., the involvement level in the issue, and (2) the capacity (or ability) to process the message” (Igartua, Cheng, & Lopes, 2003).

 The study involved 157 participants, 58 male and 99 female, ranging in age from 18 to 25. These participants were enrolled in the basic communication course at a historically Black college or university. A 2 x 4 factorial design experiment was conducted which included factors such as high or low message involvement, and character appeal with either celebrities or non-celebrities, and white or black people. The study was first introduced as an assessment of PSA’s for HIV/AIDS prevention directed toward Black youth and the participants were given instructions regarding how to complete the questionnaire they were given.

 After viewing the results, it was shown that none of the TV HIV/AIDS PSA’s involving non-celebrities caused attitude change. Therefore, message content, whether high or low, was proven to not spur enough cognitive processing to induce more personal involvement in the HIV/AIDS issue over time. The findings showed that celebrity status is the salient factor, with source perception inducing attitude change as a main effect or in an interaction effect with high- and low message content.

 Through these findings, health communication experts have come to the conclusion and realization that African American youth are heavily influenced by urban culture, and celebrities often are perceived as its representatives. This finding confirms that it is worthwhile to use celebrities to emphasize risk-averting behaviors among this target audience.

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Keys, Truman R.; Morant, Kesha M.; Stroman, Carolyn A.. Journal of Health Communication, Mar2009, Vol. 14 Issue 2, p189-202, 14p, 2 Charts; DOI:

10.1080/10810730802661646