Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #115977

Paul Hutchinson, PhD, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, 1440 Canal Street, Suite 2200, New Orleans, LA 70112, 504 585-6078, phutchin@tulane.edu and Jennifer Wheeler, MPH, Department of International Health & Development, Tulane University, 1440 Canal St, Suite 2200, New Orleans, LA 70112.

Evaluations of national full-coverage health behavior change communication campaigns are frequently plagued by reliance on measures of self-reported exposure to media messages from the same population-based surveys in which data for behavior change are collected. Self-reported exposure to media messages complicates evaluations since it is likely to be non-random, reflecting a variety of measured characteristics (e.g. access to media, attitudes, education) and unmeasured characteristics of respondents (e.g. motivations, health conscientiousness, or supply-side variables). Numerous studies (Kincaid and Do 2003; Guilkey, Hutchinson and Lance 2004) have noted that improper heed being paid to non-random exposure may lead to estimates of the effectiveness of communication efforts that are substantially biased upwards. In order to address non-random reporting of exposure, multivariate evaluation techniques with suitable controls are required. This study employs and compares the performance of two quantitative methods to address and correct for the problems of non-random assignment of individuals to treatment (exposed to the communication program) and control groups (non-exposed): (1) multivariate regression methods with instrumental variables to purge estimates of exposure of common unmeasured effects across recall and behaviors and (2) propensity score matching to compare behavior change across groups with similar likelihoods of exposure. These methods are used with data from the 2000/2001 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey to gauge the effectiveness of the multi-media Better Health Campaign which covered numerous health topics through specific media campaigns such as “Your Health Matters” and “AIDS and the Family.” Multiple reproductive health and family planning behaviors are examined.

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