� Adolescents who ar skilled in interpreting media messages approximately tobacco english hawthorn be less likely to smoke and less potential to set forth smoking in the future, according to a new study by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers. The report is now on-line in the American Journal of Health Behavior.
In this subject area, researchers assessed the media literacy of more than 1,cc adolescents. Media literacy is defined as the ability to interpret, analyze and evaluate media messages in a wide of the mark variety of forms. Building on premature research, the study focussed on determinative associations between smoking outcomes and special types of media literacy.
"Of the 442,000 people wHO die from smoking each year, the majority began smoking at age 18 or younger, and we know from our prior research that media exposure to smoking contributes strongly to the initiation of the riding habit in adolescents," said Brian Primack, M.D., Ed.M., supporter professor of medicine and pediatrics at Pitt's School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "In accession to attempting to change the way smoking is portrayed in the media, we can, as educators, develop innovational and effective ways to help young people analyze and translate the smoking-related messages they see in the media. This research could help to nidus those efforts."
Researchers issued questionnaires to students at a Pittsburgh public high school to gauge their knowledge of and attitudes toward baccy advertisements and movie placements. Of those who participated, 19 percent were current smokers, spell 40 percent of the non-smokers were identified as being likely to hummer in the future-figures that reflect national averages.
Students participating in the work were asked 18 questions related to three types of media literacy, including questions that focused on the portrait of the tobacco industry as knock-down and manipulative; the promotion of tobacco using appealing images and logos to evoke emotional responses; and the ironical difference betwixt positive characterization of tobacco plant in the media and the genuine effects of tobacco usage on health.
The researchers linked students' responses on a unspecific range of questions related to media literacy to their current smoking habits and likelihood of smoke in the future. Most notably, students who demonstrated an understanding of the sharp contrast between the actual personal effects of smoke and prescribed media portrayals of smoke were more than likely to be non-smokers. Likewise, students who believed that coffin nail advertising leaves out important information also were less likely to smoke.
"These findings propose that those with higher media literacy, especially with regard to certain facets of media literacy, may be less likely to smoke," said Dr. Primack. "Hopefully, these and other results volition help educators design anti-smoking programming that is suitably tailored to its quarry audience."
Co-author of the study is Renee Hobbs, Ed.D., from Temple University. Dr. Primack was supported by financing from the National Cancer Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Maurice Falk Foundation.
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University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is unmatchable of the nation's star medical schools, renowned for its course of study that emphasizes both the science and humanity of medicine and its remarkable growth in National Institutes of Health (NIH) subsidization support, which has more than two-fold since 1998. For financial year 2006, the university ranked sixth out of more than 3,000 entities receiving NIH support with respect to the research grants awarded to its staff. The majority of these grants were awarded to the mental faculty of the medical school. As unrivalled of the university's six Schools of the Health Sciences, the School of Medicine is the academic partner to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Their combined mission is to coach tomorrow's health care specialists and biomedical scientists, lock in groundbreaking research that will advance understanding of the causes and treatments of disease and enter in the delivery of outstanding patient care.
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