<b> ABSTRACT </b>
<p>
For more than 30 years, college administrators and health communicators have used binge drinking prevention campaigns on university campuses to deter students from this dangerous and life-threatening habit.
<p>
Despite the prevalence of such campaigns (Wechsler, Seibring, Liu & Ahl, 2004), binge drinking remains the top public health threat for this population (Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport, & Castillo, 1995).
<p>
In this study, the researcher conducted an experiment using fear appeals to see if these messages were more effective than social norms messages, which are often used in college binge drinking prevention campaigns (Real & Rimal, 2007), at prompting higher message credibility and intentions to change behavior for a sample of college students.
<p>
Overall, students in this experiment who viewed messages containing fear, either alone or combined with social norms, reported higher message credibility scores, and students who received a message using only fear reported higher intentions to change behavior than students who received a message with only social norms.
<p>
This study offers experimental evidence that fear appeals could be an effective health communication strategy for binge drinking prevention campaigns aimed at college students.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04282010-122823 |
| Date | 30 April 2010 |
| Creators | Sunde, Kristen Meyer |
| Contributors | DeFleur, Margaret, Osborne, Anne, Scholl, Rosanne |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04282010-122823/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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