Rated Measures of Narrative Structure for Written Smoking-Cessation Texts

Abstract

This article describes the effect of a series of rated measures of narrative structure on recognition memory, agreement on story-relevant beliefs, and intention to engage in a health-related behavior—in this case smoking cessation. Using short smoking-cessation stories as stimuli, data were collected in a nationally representative sample of adult smokers (n = 1,312). Results suggested that messages rated as more sequential improved encoding and messages rated as containing more context decreased encoding. Messages rated high in transportation were associated with increased recognition, agreement with story-relevant beliefs, and intention to quit. Both positive and negative emotion were positively associated with intention to quit, but were negatively associated with recognition memory.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work was done as part of a larger dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Cappella.

Notes

1. ¹There were three other belief items that were not directly related to the story, “I would gain weight,” “I would be more irritable,” and “I would be a pain to be around.”

2. ²There were no clear ceiling or floor effects for any of the 12 questions. There was also a “don’t know” option that was treated as incorrect for the purpose of this analysis.

3. ³Varimax rotation was chosen because it is the most common form of factor analysis for social scientists and describes the greatest possible level of variance (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). Further, this may provide more easily interpretable results than other types of factor analytic methods.