 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Charlene Caburnay, MPH1, Douglas Luke, PhD1, and Matthew W. Kreuter, PhD, MPH2. (1) Health Communication Research Laboratory, Saint Louis University, 3545 Lafayette Ave., Saint Louis, MO 63104, 314-977-4028, caburnay@slu.edu, (2) Health Communication Research Laboratory, School of Public Health, Saint Louis University, 3545 Lafayette Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63104
As the media’s coverage of disease prevention and health promotion issues is less than optimal for public health researchers, understanding the degree to which journalists have been “enterprising” with their health stories and raising journalists’ awareness of this effort could serve as a first step to increasing the quality of the health stories they publish. In this study we developed a measure of journalistic enterprise for health stories published in local newspapers and confirmed the factorial structure of the three subscales and the overall measure using structural equation modeling. A total of 1,373 health stories from 1999-2000 in four mid-size Missouri community daily newspapers were then analyzed to determine each story’s degree of journalistic enterprise. Using these results, we examined which attributes (e.g., story source, story type, content and access frames) of locally-produced health stories are related to this construct of journalistic enterprise by using structural equation modeling, path analysis, and regression to test the various structural models. Because highly enterprising stories have a better likelihood of being attended to, remembered, and influencing attitudes and behaviors, knowing the story attributes related to highly enterprising health stories may help media advocates better advocate for these specific types of stories.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Health Communications, Media Advocacy
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.