The Effectiveness of Media Use in Health Education: Evaluation of an HIV/AIDS Radio Campaign in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

An effective vehicle to change behaviors is entertainment education. To demonstrate entertainment education effects, researchers must first indicate that participants have been exposed to their program. Exposure to effective programs has been associated with increases in knowledge about program topics, attitude change, and self-efficacious perceptions. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a new exposure technique that accurately and precisely determines direct exposure levels to Ethiopia's Journey of Life. Overall, the study found very high listenership, storyline recall, liking of the program, and strong desire to change behavior while maintaining low error rates in terms of verbatim recall of storylines and reported listenership to a fictitious program.