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The ability of researchers to empirically test theories of media effects and to assess impact of communication campaigns depends on their ability to identify levels of exposure to the media or messages of interest. This paper critically examines exposure operationalization and analysis strategies, including some not yet widely used in the communication field.

Using six major mass communication research journals, including Journalism Quarterly, this article examines current practices in mass communication research with respect to message experiment design, analysis, and inference, and provides a logically consistent framework for mass communication researchers to make experimental design and data analysis decisions. The proposed conceptual framework is outlined in the context of recent controversies about such experiments, including the challenge of when to treat message stimuli as random versus fixed effects.

This experiment examines the impact of messages on subsequent beliefs about social groups. As a result of probable differences between the processing of familiar versus unfamiliar social information, nonfiction messages are expected to influence beliefs about social group member characteristics more than do fiction messages only when the social group described is relatively familiar. The experiment is a 2 × 2 within-subjects design, with 16 stimuli arranged in a 4 × Greco-Latin square. Twenty-four subjects received one of four sets of prose excerpts, each excerpt labeled as fiction or nonfiction and manipulated to refer to a familiar or unfamiliar social group. Interactions between familiarity and fiction / nonfiction status on beliefs about social group member characteristics and on confidence in belief estimates are found. It is concluded that the impact of fiction messages about unfamiliar peoples on readers' beliefs may well be equal to or greater than that of nonfiction messages.

Although source credibility's importance in communication, particularly in persuasion, is well documented, audience processes in assessing source credibility and the resulting impact are inadequately specified. We hypothesize message quality will have direct effects and mediate partially the effects of initial credibility assessments on subsequent source credibility assessments and on belief change. Also, subsequent credibility assessments are expected to mediate effects of initial credibility assessments and message quality assessments on belief change. Reanalyses of experimental data (N=74) support the hypothesized direct effects and several proposed mediating relationships.

This study of persuasion processes in a value-relevant context tests effects of the presence or absence of statistical evidence and the presence or absence of anecdotal evidence, crossed across three base messages regarding different alcohol use issues. Results suggest that a variant of central processing as described by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) was used: Involvement predicted greater message-relevant responses only when the message was congruent with recipients' own values regarding alcohol use. Among recipients for whom the message was value-congruent, messages with statistical evidence were rated more persuasive, more believable, and better written; anecdotal evidence had no effect. Among recipients for whom the message was value-discrepant, messages with anecdotal evidence were rated more persuasive, more believable, and (marginally) better written, and statistical evidence had no effect. Path analyses also suggest that peripheral-processing strategies are employed when the message is value-discrepant, and central-processing strategies are used when the message is value-congruent.

The role of confidence in beliefs as an outcome of message exposure and as a factor in the process of belief change has important theoretical implications for theories of media effects and theories of belief change. Using as stimuli messages portraying women of two different cultural backgrounds, this experiment identifies some effects of source expertise and message discrepancy on confidence in beliefs over three posttests (immediate, 10-14 days, and 6 weeks). Messages that were discrepant with existing beliefs had a greater impact on confidence in beliefs than did nondiscrepant messages; more expert sources also slightly increased confidence in beliefs. The direction of the effect of discrepancy (an increase) was opposite to that predicted. Path analyses suggest that the effects of confidence in beliefs on persistence of belief change in this study are largely indirect; the authors suggest that effects of message exposure on confidence and the effects of confidence on belief change persistence may depend on whether the beliefs addressed in the message are central or peripheral.

Prior research has found strong evidence of a prospective association between R-rated movie exposure and teen smoking. Using parallel process latent-growth modeling, the present study examines prospective associations between viewing of music video channels on television (e.g., MTV and VH-1) and changes over time in smoking and association with smoking peers. Results showed that baseline viewing of music-oriented channels such as MTV and VH-1 robustly predicted increasing trajectories of smoking and of associating with smoking peers, even after application of a variety of controls including parent reports of monitoring behavior. These results are consistent with the arguments from the reinforcing spirals model that such media use serves as a means of developing emergent adolescent social identities consistent with associating with smoking peers and acquiring smoking and other risk behaviors; evidence also suggests that media choice in reinforcing spiral processes are dynamic and evolve as social identity evolves.

Alcohol advertisements may influence impulsive, risky behaviors indirectly, via automatically activated attitudes toward alcohol. Results from an experiment in which participants were exposed to either four alcohol advertisements, four control advertisements, or four drunk driving public service advertisements (PSAs) suggested that alcohol advertisements had more measurable effects on implicit than on explicit attitude measures. Moreover, there were significant indirect paths from alcohol advertisement exposure through automatically activated alcohol attitudes on willingness to engage in risky alcohol-related behaviors, notably drinking and driving. A mechanism that may explain how these advertisements activate automatic, nondeliberative alcohol attitudes was investigated. Associative evidence was found supportive of an evaluative conditioning mechanism, in which positive responses to an alcohol advertisement may lead to more positive automatically activated attitudes toward alcohol.

The exchange of opinions is an important component of participatory democracies, and newspaper forum pages have been hailed as a conduit for such discussion. This research explored Schwartz's value framework to characterize lay and journalist frames in a national sample of local newspapers. A content analysis was conducted on newspaper forum articles on health policy issues—notably, alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, and crime—for the presence and complexity of value frames. Significant differences in values were found by article type and topic. Values typically associated with liberalism were also predictive of greater integrative complexity.

This article will review the role of behavioral theory in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and then will identify lessons learned as the Campaign evolved to adjust to new insights and the realities of the mission. It should be noted that the primary dependence on national advertising, as opposed to a more integrated campaign using community-based or other media and social marketing strategies, or a more targeted, segmented campaign, was a premise of the Campaign as authorized by Congress. In other words, the role of social science was limited primarily to identifying desired attitudinal and behavioral outcomes and to helping develop message platforms and briefs that might help achieve those outcomes. Although social science input was not invited with respect to the broader strategic issues in prevention communication strategy, its application in the design and implementation of a major national media campaign has been a unique opportunity worthy of documentation and further consideration.

This study examines longitudinal evidence for the impact of exposure to an in-school media campaign on adolescent substance use attitudes and behaviors, using data from four middle schools in two school districts. Amount of exposure to the campaign directly impacted perceptions that marijuana use was inconsistent with personal aspirations and intentions to use marijuana and appeared to reduce maturational decay in those attitudes. Path analyses suggested effects on behavior change, consistent with the theory of reasoned action, were via effects on intention and exposure effects on intention were via effects on aspirations. Reverse causation was tested and rejected, as were possible moderation models that might also qualify exposure effects. Analyses of a foil recognition measure using a treatment and control population suggested that response set artifacts were nominal in size and that response bias was slight and could be statistically controlled.