 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Lynda Bergsma, PhD, Mel and Enid Zuckerman Arizona College of Public Health, Rural Health Office, University of Arizona, 2501 East Elm Street, Tucson, AZ 85716, 520/626-7946, Ext 235, lbergsma@u.arizona.edu and Maia Ingram, MPH, Rural Health Office, University of Arizona, 2501 E. Elm, Tucson, AZ 85716.
Over a period of two years, the Blowing Smoke Project created and evaluated a grade 6-8 media literacy based curriculum for tobacco use prevention that addresses the influence of tobacco use in movies popular with youth. Eight Arizona middle schools from urban and rural settings participated in the project evaluation–five implementation schools and three comparison schools. Subject areas of the teachers implementing the curriculum included social studies, language arts, life skills, and health. Fifteen-question pre/post-tests were administered four weeks apart to 295 7th grade students in the implementation schools and 294 7th grade students in the comparison schools, for a total of 589 students. The pre/post-test sought to establish the effectiveness of the curriculum on three measures: 1. Increased knowledge of tobacco product placement in film. 2. Increased awareness of the portrayal of tobacco use in film. 3. Increased negative attitudes toward the use of tobacco in film. Small but significant increases on all three measures were demonstrated by the implementation group, while there was no change in the comparison group. Based upon five-point scales for each measure, the level of change was .5 in both knowledge and awareness (p<.001) and .1 in attitudes (p<.05). The results established the efficacy of Blowing Smoke as a media literacy and tobacco prevention curriculum, and media literacy education as a prevention strategy. In addition, analysis of the students’ baseline levels regarding the three evaluation measures revealed a demonstrated need for more extensive media literacy education.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Media Literacy, Prevention
Related Web page: www.blowingsmoke.arizona.edu
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.