Evaluation of a social marketing campaign to de-normalize tobacco use among young adults: Evaluation of Ohio's DEBUNKIFY campaign

In July 2006 Ohio launched an aggressive anti-tobacco media campaign toward 18 – 24 year olds by working to de-normalize tobacco use. Baseline data from this study indicates that youth tend to over-estimate the prevalence of smoking in part because smoking is a marked behavior, this can foster a culture that tolerates smoking. The campaign seeks to counter, or “debunkify” myths about the prevalence and social appeal of smoking. For instance one campaign ads features glamorously dressed gameshow models dramatizing the nonsmokers walking down a street, or in a mall, along with the message, “what would happen if we realized that 8 out of 10 Ohioans do not smoke?“

This study reports on a longitudinal sample of young adults in Ohio and compares the rates of tobacco use over the same time in a longitudinal sample of US youth. We compared a survey of approximately 800 Ohio youth, evenly divided between college and non-college youth, to a comparable group of youth in a U.S. sample. The analyses compared changes awareness of the prevalence of smoking, beliefs in the social appeal of smoking, and changes in tobacco smoking and the progression to established smoking. We compared changes in trends and changes among individuals recalled being exposed or not exposed to the campaign. This study particularly focused on the effects on the social smoking of young adults. The paper discusses the implications of study findings for efforts to combat tobacco use among young adults.