MPH 505 Week 4 Health Message Critique Example

Health Message Critique: A Boat Ramp Sign That Tells Anglers They Could Become a Statistic and Asks Them Only to Carry What They Already Carry

Student Name

Chamberlain University

MPH 505: Public Health Communication and Behavioral Health Theories

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Health Message Critique: A Boat Ramp Sign That Tells Anglers They Could Become a Statistic and Asks Them Only to Carry What They Already Carry

The Message and Where It Appears

The message critiqued here is a metal sign of the kind posted beside the launch lanes at many public boat ramps. The version analyzed is a composite of common ramp signage, posted at the Kettle Lake ramp in Pruitt County, a composite rural county. It is about 24 by 36 inches, printed in white on red, with a small photograph of an empty, overturned boat. Its full wording is reproduced below so a reader can follow every point.

"Don't become a statistic. Most boaters who drown were not wearing a life jacket. Accidents happen in seconds. Conditions can change without warning. Every boat must carry a U.S. Coast Guard approved life jacket for each person on board. Boat responsibly. Life jackets save lives."

The intended audience, by its placement, is everyone launching a boat. The audience this critique uses as the test is the segment identified in the week 3 analysis: boat-owning anglers in their forties to seventies, out on small open hulls by themselves or with a friend, nearly all of whom carry a life jacket and rarely put it on.

What the Message Assumes About Its Audience

The sign assumes three things. It assumes the reader does not know that life jackets save lives, which is false for this segment. It assumes the reader may not have one aboard, which is also false for nearly all of them. And it assumes that fear of becoming a statistic will move people to act. The first two assumptions mean the sign addresses a problem the segment does not have. The third is tested below.

The Appeal: Threat Without a Doable Action

The sign uses a fear appeal. Its threat is drowning, and its imagery, an overturned boat with no one in it, implies a death. Witte's (1992) extended parallel process model predicts that a fear appeal works when people believe both that the threat is real and that a recommended action will reduce it and is within their power. When threat is high and efficacy is low, people control their fear instead of the danger, by dismissing the message or the source. A meta-analysis of fear appeals found that they generally do change attitudes, intentions and behaviors, but that the effect is larger when the message recommends an action that can be done once, and when it includes efficacy content (Tannenbaum et al., 2015).

Measured against those findings, the sign has two weaknesses. Its threat is generic, "accidents happen in seconds," with nothing that would make a man in a small boat on a calm morning feel addressed. And its efficacy content is weak in a way that matters: the only concrete action it names is carrying a life jacket, which this audience already does. The one line that implies wearing, "most boaters who drown were not wearing a life jacket," is stated as a statistic rather than as a request. A reader can finish the sign satisfied that his vest under the seat meets every word of it.

Table 1

The Ramp Sign Read Through the Extended Parallel Process Model

Note. Note. Model constructs from Witte (1992).

Reading Level and Fit

The sign's wording scores at roughly a fifth to sixth grade level on the Flesch-Kincaid formula, which I calculated from its 45 words in seven sentences. Reading level is therefore not the problem; most readers in any audience can understand it. That is a finding in itself: a readable message can still fail when it asks for the wrong action. Fit is the issue. "Boat responsibly" implies that men who leave the vest under the seat are irresponsible, which is likely to be heard as a scolding from an agency. The segment's trusted sources are bait shop owners and experienced anglers, and nothing on the sign sounds like them. There is also no Spanish version, although a growing share of anglers at the county's second ramp speak Spanish at home.

Does the Mechanism Work for This Population?

The evidence on campaigns to raise life jacket wear among adults is not encouraging for education alone. In the Wear It California! campaign, observed adult wear in the California Delta rose from 8.5% to 12.1% in the first year, then fell to 9.4% and settled at 10.5% more than three years later; at four Army Corps lakes in Mississippi that required wear, adult use rose from 13.7% to about 70% and stayed there for three years (Mangione & Chow, 2014). A sign that relies on fear and on a carriage rule is weaker still than a campaign. Fear appeals can work, but the conditions for this sign are poor: generic threat, no efficacy and an action already done.

One Revision, Defended

I would keep the ramp as the location, because it is the moment the decision is made, and change what the sign asks for. The revised sign would read: "Most men who drown out here go in on a calm day, standing to cast, net or pull an anchor. A vest under the seat won't reach you. Clip one on before you back in." Below it would be a photograph of a local angler, named with his permission, wearing an inflatable belt pack at the Kettle Lake dock, and a line naming the two local shops that offer a trade-in discount. A smaller panel would show how to check that an inflatable is armed.

This revision changes the message in four ways the critique identified. The threat is tied to the segment's own moments. The action is wearing, before launch, not carrying. Efficacy is added through the inflatable, the discount and the arming panel. And the voice shifts from an agency to a peer, which follows the week 3 finding about trust. The revision would need testing with members of the segment before it went up, and its effect would need measuring by ramp observation, not by whether people remember the sign.

Limits of This Critique

The sign is a composite of common ramp signage rather than a single sign with a known history, so I cannot report how it was developed or whether it was ever evaluated. The critique also judges the sign against one segment; for families with children on pontoon boats, the carriage line might be more useful. Finally, the evidence cited about campaigns comes from other regions, and Pruitt County's anglers may differ.

References

Mangione, T., & Chow, W. (2014). Changing life jacket wearing behavior: An evaluation of two approaches. Journal of Public Health Policy, 35(2), 204-218. https://doi.org/10.1057/jphp.2013.51

Tannenbaum, M. B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R. S., Saul, L., Jacobs, S., Wilson, K., & Albarracín, D. (2015). Appealing to fear: A meta-analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories. Psychological Bulletin, 141(6), 1178-1204. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039729

Witte, K. (1992). Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model. Communication Monographs, 59(4), 329-349. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759209376276