Casting Health Messages in Terms of Responsibility for Dietary Change: Increasing Fruit and Vegetable Consumption
Abstract
Objective
To compare the effectiveness of messages emphasizing the importance of either personal or social responsibility for dietary behavior change in increasing fruit and vegetable intake.
Design/Setting
Randomly assigned individually or socially oriented messages were delivered at baseline, 1 week, and 2 and 3 months later. Telephone surveys were conducted at baseline and 1 and 4 months later.
Participants
528 callers to a cancer information hotline who were not meeting the “5 A Day” dietary recommendation.
Interventions
A brief telephone-delivered message and 3 mailings of pamphlets and promotional items encouraging fruit and vegetable intake that emphasized either personal or social responsibility.
Main Outcome Measures
Fruit and vegetable intake 1 and 4 months postbaseline.
Analysis
Chi-square, t tests, and analyses of variance and covariance.
Results
Both types of messages increased intake substantially (P = .01). To some extent, the social responsibility message continued to motivate increased intake over time compared with the personal responsibility message.
Conclusions and Implications
These minimal interventions had a substantial impact on fruit and vegetable intake. Health messages might be more effective over the longer term if they are designed to emphasize the importance of social responsibility, although further study is needed to confirm the robustness of these findings.
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aHealth, Emotion, and Behavior Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
bDepartment of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
cNew England Office of the Cancer Information Service, Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, Connecticut
Address for correspondence: Peter Salovey, PhD, Department of Psychology, Yale University, PO Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8205; Tel: (203) 432-4546; Fax: (203) 432-8430
The research reported in this article was funded by National Cancer Institute grant R01-CA68427. National Institute of Mental Health grant P01-MH/DA56826 and National Institute on Drug Abuse grant P50-DA13334 facilitated manuscript preparation.
ABSTRACT