Literacy and Smoking Risk Communications

Summary

Objectives:

Smokers with varying levels of health literacy as assessed by the S-TOFHLA (i.e., inadequate, marginal, adequate) recruited from the community will listen to one of 4 different types of messages emphasizing the health consequences of smoking recorded on a computer in the form of audio scripts (i.e., a human voice pre-recorded on a computer will read each message). Messages written at a 5th to 6th grade reading level will be concurrently presented in written form via a computer monitor and be manipulated in terms of 1) emotionality (i.e., primarily fact- vs. primarily emotion-based), and 2) framing (i.e., gain-framed messages that highlight the potential benefits of quitting smoking vs. loss-framed messages that emphasize the potential costs of failing to quit smoking). Emotionality and framing will be completely crossed to create four different types of messages, 1) factual gain-framed (FGF), 2) factual loss-framed (FLF), 3) emotional gain-framed (EGF), and 4) emotional loss-framed (ELF).

The primary objectives are to:

1. Examine whether main effects emerge for health literacy as assessed by the S-TOFHLA (inadequate, marginal, adequate) and the different message types (fact- vs. emotion-based and gain- vs. loss-framed) on the primary explicit and implicit outcomes: a) intention to quit, and b) implicit and explicit attitudes toward smoking.
2. Examine whether health literacy interacts with the different types of messages (fact-based vs. emotion-based and gain-framed vs. loss-framed) to influence the primary explicit and implicit outcome measures: a) intention to quit smoking, and b) implicit and explicit attitudes toward smoking.

A secondary, exploratory aim is to:
3. Examine potential associations between a) the primary explicit and implicit outcomes, and b) the secondary explicit and implicit outcomes: knowledge, risk perception, attitudes, self-efficacy, message evaluations, implicit fear of disease, and implicit associations between smoking and disease.

Conditions

• Smoking

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Focus Group

Focus group discussion and evaluation of various smoking risk informational messages. The focus group session should last about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

BEHAVIORAL

Questionnaire

Questionnaires taking 15-30 minutes to complete.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Cancer Institute (NCI)

  collaborator NIH

• M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Lorna H. McNeill, MPH,PHD · M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

70 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2008-05-21

Primary Completion

2026-05-31

Completion

2026-05-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations