Five step model: Steps 3 and 4

This 40 minute presentation, the fourth in the full-day Learning Institute, “Social norms marketing interventions: Context, evidence, planning, implementation & evaluation," will provide detailed education for participants, with opportunity for experiential learning, about steps 3 and 4 in the Five Step Model for designing, implementing and evaluating social norms interventions. Step 3, Develop and Test the Message, provides multiple opportunities for engaging participants in stimulating and fun learning activities.

The presentation will begin with a review of what constitutes normative data, with multiple examples from different areas of public health. The importance of understanding and investigating two types of norms, descriptive and injunctive will be discussed. Print media from a variety of public health campaigns using normative messages will be used to ensure that participants understand the difference between descriptive and injunctive norms and can correctly identify each type of norm. The potential importance of this differentiation, particularly for audiences who do engage in high risk behaviors, will be highlighted with data from a study of high risk drinking and attitudes towards high risk drinking among college fraternity members.

The critical importance of involving members of the audience in development of the message and media will be stressed. At the same time, the presentation will alert participants to the need to limit possible choices to those appropriate for social marketing interventions (e.g., messages that avoid negative advertising such as “health terrorism”, stigmatization, accentuating the negative).

This will segue into Step 4, “Testing the Message.” The importance of ensuring that the audience is understanding the intended message will be emphasized with media that failed in this regard, and a discussion with the audience of what went wrong and how it could be remedied. This part of the presentation will largely consist of reviewing media examples with the audience and guiding discussion about what the media, including what audience it was likely designed for, whether the message is understandable outside of that audience, whether the message would likely have an impact outside of that audience, and alternative modes of delivery.

The presentation will include leading the participants in the critique a poster, identifying the ways in which it failed to meet the principles of social marketing, and suggesting redesigns of the image and message. Powerpoint will be used interactively to illustrate the suggested redesigns.

The conclusion will emphasize the importance of accepting real world limitations and not expecting perfection. An analogy to a different public health challenge from a different era: the challenge in post-war England of reunited families, will be used creatively to guide the participants in a discussion of what constitutes “good enough.”