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North Carolina
An Evaluation of a Mass Media Campaign to Encourage Parents of Adolescents to Talk to Their Children About Sex
Brenner Center for Child and Adolescent Health, Department of Pediatrics
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Robert H. DuRant, PhD, Mark Wolfson, PhD, Betty LaFrance, PhD, Linda Riggsbee, David Altman, PhD
In 1999 the state of North Carolina in collaboration with the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Coalition of North Carolina initiated a mass media campaign to promote parents of adolescents to talk to their children about sex. The campaign utilized paid public service announcements (PSAs) that were aired during highly rated television (TV) programs during the day and evening, radio PSAs throughout the day and evening, and billboards and city bus signs with the message “Talk to your kids about sex. Everyone else is.” Wake Forest University completed an evaluation of a mass media campaign in North Carolina to evaluate whether parents of adolescents were exposed to any or all of these PSAs and billboards and if they remembered the messages, This evaluation also assessed whether parents’ reports of their level of exposure to each type of PSA and billboard message was associated with parents recently talking to their adolescent children about issues related to sexual behavior and contraception, parents’ attitudes concerning communicating with their children about sexual issues, an parents’ intent to talk to their children about these issues in the future.
Below are the results from the study:
- Nearly 50% of males and 58% of females stated that they had heard the campaign song or seen a poster with the slogan “You can go farther if you don’t go all the way.”
- African-American boys were more likely than white and “other” boys to report that they were sexually active, and similarly a significantly larger percent of African-American girls than of white girls reported that they had experienced sexual intercourse
- The youngest male group (10-11) was more likely to recall PSAs than older boys
- African-American girls recalled on average more television PSAs than did white or “other” girls
- Girls were more likely to discuss TV PSAs with others, and older girls were significantly more likely to discuss the campaign with others than were younger girls
- Higher levels of exposure to the campaign increase the odds of talking with others about it
- Younger teens were more likely to indicate an intention to delay sexual debut
- Boys and girls who had not had their sexual debut were significantly less likely to think that sex was appropriate for them during their adolescence
- Boys ages 12-13 are 40% more likely to have had sex than are their counterparts in the next younger cohort
- Neither mother’s education nor receiving free school lunch were significant predictors of early sexual debut
- Peers that are sexually active have a high influence on adolescents, especially among adolescent boys
- Campaign achieved very high exposure levels and was widely recognized
- Campaign ads and posters were successful in cautioning young people about the consequences of teen sexual activity and in presenting abstinence as an obvious way to avoid these consequences
- Campaign has been successful with respect to the awareness and persuasion stages as understood within the common models of behavior change