Understanding the Effectiveness of the Entertainment-Education Strategy: An Investigation of How Audience Involvement, Message Processing, and Message Design Influence Health Information Recall

A growing body of evidence suggests that entertainment-education (EE) is a promising health communication strategy. The purpose of this study was to identify some of the factors that facilitate and hinder audience involvement with EE messages. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors introduc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of health communication 2013-02, Vol.18 (2), p.160-178
Main Authors: Quintero Johnson, Jessie M., Harrison, Kristen, Quick, Brian L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Audience
Biological and medical sciences
Cognitive psychology
Communication
Design of experiments
Discriminant analysis
Entertainment
Experiments
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Female
Health Communication - methods
Health education
Health promotion
Health technology assessment
Humans
Information
Information processing
Male
Medical sciences
Mental Recall
Miscellaneous
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Recall
Young Adult
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Summary:A growing body of evidence suggests that entertainment-education (EE) is a promising health communication strategy. The purpose of this study was to identify some of the factors that facilitate and hinder audience involvement with EE messages. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors introduce a construct they call experiential involvement, which describes the experience of being cognitively and emotionally involved with EE messages and is a product of transportation into an EE text and identification with EE characters. Using an experimental design, the authors also investigated how reports of experiential involvement and health information recall varied depending on the degree to which the educational content was well integrated with the narrative content in EE messages. Findings indicated that integration significantly influenced health information recall. Results indicated that experiential involvement and the perception that the health topic in EE messages was personally relevant predicted participants' systematic processing of the information in EE messages. Contrary to expectation, personal relevance did not predict experiential involvement, and systematic message processing was negatively related to health information recall. Implications for the construction of EE messages and the study of the EE strategy are discussed.
ISSN:1081-0730
1087-0415
DOI:10.1080/10810730.2012.688244