Media Literacy
9
be more likely to develop efficacy related to themselves resisting potential influences to use
tobacco. In addition, nonsmokers will be more receptive to logic-based information about
mediated portrayals of smoking, such as realism, with the curriculum activating their awareness
of the desirable aspects of portrayals. Smokers will be especially responsive on affect-oriented
aspects of decision making more closely predictive of smoking behavior itself, such as a
reduction in their perceived desirability of portrayals, their identification with individuals
portrayed as smokers, and their expectancies for smoking. Nonsmokers, presumably already
low on these characteristics, are less likely to demonstrate change. It is hypothesized, however,
that both smokers and nonsmokers should benefit from the media literacy curriculum’s
cultivation of reflective and critical thinking and may develop some anger toward advertisers and
more negative attitudes towards advertising.
Method
The evaluation took the form of a Solomon four-group design, conducted in the field. As
shown in Table 1, the use of a control group enabled researchers to distinguish program-related
changes from effects that might result instead from other ongoing statewide, national or
community prevention programs taking place simultaneously. The inclusion of pretest-posttest
and posttest-only groups made it possible to identify and exclude possible testing effects, making
it less likely that posttest differences attributed to the intervention would be spurious.
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Table 1 About Here
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Convention