Perceived Effectiveness of Fear Appeals in AIDS Education: Relationship to Ethnicity, Gender, Age, and Group Membership

• NCJ Number: 126481
• Journal: AIDS Education and Prevention Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1990) Pages: 1-11
• Author(s): F Rhodes; R J Wolitski
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 11 pages
• Contract Number(s): U62/CCU902043
• Sponsoring Agency: Ctr's for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper describes a survey of the efficacy of fear appeal posters advocating condom use to prevent AIDS in a group of 261 community residents, college students, and intravenous drug users (IVDU).

Abstract

Forty experimental AIDS posters were prepared using 10 different pictures and 4 different printed messages relating to disease severity, personal vulnerability (PV), and response efficacy (RE). Subject characteristics examined include gender, age, ethnicity, and group membership (GM) with particular focus on effectiveness of elements of visual content. Using the Thurstone method of equal-appearing intervals subjects sorted the posters into five categories according to judged effectiveness in promoting condom use to prevent AIDS, and, in interviews, gave reasons for their particular responses. Results from this study reveal high severity/fear posters are significantly more effective than the low-severity/fear posters, but RE and PV are significant only in interactions with other variables. Although age, gender, ethnicity, and GM did not overall influence effectiveness, GM and age significantly affected severity/fear level, and RE, respectively. The findings suggest that this fear appeal approach can be an effective method in AIDS education programs. 31 references, 21 tables, and 1 figure (Author abstract modified)