Effects of a Cousteau Television Special on Viewer Knowledge and Attitudes

Abstract

Is television an effective medium for communicating environmental information to the general public? This study made use of a “two-way television” cable system to evaluate knowledge and attitude changes among viewers of a new Cousteau documentary. The experiment consisted of a televised pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest among randomly selected viewers and nonviewers of the documentary. Viewer knowledge increased significantly and remained high for two weeks. Viewer attitudes shifted toward the attitude goals of the producers, but within two weeks returned to pretreatment levels. No significant changes occurred among the control group.