Behavioral Recommendations in Health Research News as Cues to Action: Self-Relevancy and Self-Efficacy Processes

Abstract

This study argues that behavioral recommendations in health news function as cues to action. A proposed self-oriented model seeks to explore the impacts of behavioral recommendations in health research news as cues to action through their influences on self-relevancy and self-efficacy. A content analysis (Study 1) first establishes that health research news commonly features behavioral recommendations. A message experiment (Study 2) then explores the utility of behavioral recommendations as cues to action by demonstrating a self-relevancy effect: Health research news with, as opposed to without, behavioral recommendations increases the self-relevancy of advocated health behaviors, which then improve people’s attitudes toward and intentions to adopt those behaviors. A second message experiment (Study 3) tests whether varying presentations of behavioral recommendations alter their effectiveness as cues to action and thus people’s behavioral intentions through a dual effect process. In addition to the previously demonstrated self-relevancy effect, this experiment shows that concrete, as opposed to abstract, behavioral recommendations trigger a self-efficacy effect, increasing perceived self-efficacy and further improving behavioral intentions.

Notes

¹ The appropriateness of exploring news in online databases was confirmed by Chang (2014). First, the articles in the databases duplicate those published in newspapers, making them ideal for researchers interested in studying newspaper articles. Second, unlike newspapers’ short shelf lives, stories in databases create multiple exposures because they can be accessed long after their initial publication. Third, people often search online for health news, so news reports included in databases have the potential to generate wider exposure.

² Subcategories include research on nutrition (e.g., dietary choices, nutrition and health, human nutrition, food sensitivities or allergies, functional foods, the relationship between food and health) and addictions (e.g., alcohol, smoking).

³ Subcategories include foodborne illnesses, food ingredients (e.g., normal ingredients, chemical additives, pesticides), food–disease links, and food additive safety.

⁴ The procedures involve the following steps: (a) Clearly define each construct, (b) identify and define levels and subcategories of each construct that are mutually exclusive, (c) develop coding schemes and coding forms, (d) test and refine coding schemes, (e) provide training sessions for coders, (f) establish pilot reliability using news articles not from the sampled articles, (g) have coders code 40% of the sample and calculate intercoder reliability, and (h) have coders split up and each code 30% of the remaining sample.

⁵ Holsti’s scores, Scott’s pi, and Cohen’s kappa for the three categories were .86/.77/.77, 1/1/1, and .86/.73/.73, respectively.