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Abstract
This study examines how the sexual imagery in cigarette magazine advertisements changed as a result of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA). After conducting a content analysis of 657 unduplicated cigarette ads from 1994 to 2003, our results revealed that cigarette advertisements featuring suggestive/partially clad female models increased significantly from the pre-MSA period (16.0%) to the post-MSA period (24.9%). In addition, we provide empirical evidence that there was an overall increase in sexually explicit cigarette advertising after the MSA. Several implications for policymakers are discussed in detail.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank Leonard N. Reid and Hye-Jin Paek for their helpful comments and support.
Notes
1We used Fisher exact test for determining statistical significance. Fisher's exact test is known to be a more appropriate alternative to the chi-square test, especially when the sample size is small and the two-by-two tables are highly unbalanced (CitationFleiss, 1981), which was true in our study.