Evaluation of the First 5 Shasta Media Campaign

This 39-page report includes details of an evaluation of a United-States-based social marketing campaign called First 5 Shasta. Created by Underground Advertising for the Shasta Children and Families First Commission, this campaign was an effort to increase community leaders' involvement in, and commitment to supporting, early childhood development issues and initiatives. This report presents the results of several strategies used to evaluate the effectiveness of this community-based awareness advertising campaign, which represents the communications component of a commission working in Shasta County in the state of California to administer tobacco tax revenues by funding efforts to enhance the health and well-being of young children, pre-natal to age 5, and their families.

The campaign is described here as a "public will campaign", and is based on a model of behaviour change (the Theory of Reasoned Action) that assumes that individuals move towards objectives in a progression from awareness to knowledge to attitudes to intentions to behaviours. Specifically, the campaign focused on changing key community leaders' awareness, knowledge, and attitudes about children aged zero-to-5 years, with the ultimate goal of encouraging these leaders to support the broader goals of First 5 Shasta through changed policies and fiscal support of programmes - such as those that draw on an understanding of the impacts that a child's emotional, physical, social and intellectual environments have on how his or her brain develops. The goal, in short, is to foster a community in which parents and caregivers, community leaders, service providers and other community members promote the well-being of young children. (Please visit the First 5 Shasta website to learn more about the initiative)

As detailed here, the campaign - which ran from July 2004 through June 2006 - involved development of the following media messages: five 30-second radio messages, as well as other shorter pieces, which were professionally produced and aired on several stations; print materials for placement in newspapers and newsletters; and "out-of-home placements" including print materials on transit shelters, signs on both the inside and outside of buses, roadside billboards, and wall posters. Each message was designed to communicate the core campaign phrase, "little investments, big returns," along with other key ideas. Most placements also directed message recipients to the First 5 Shasta website. (To view some of the billboards/messages, and to listen to a radio ad, visit the First 5 Shasta page on the Underground Advertising website.)

The primary tools in the evaluation of the radio, newspaper, and out-of-home messages of the campaign were 2 surveys of key community leaders such as public agency department managers, business owners and leaders, elected officials, and active community members. Duerr Evaluation Resources conducted the first survey in November 2004, about 4 months after the campaign began. This was followed by a second survey in May 2006, one month prior to the campaign's end. About 130 individuals were sampled in both surveys, which resulted in a survey response rate in 2006 of 63%. Key findings include:

• 88% of the 2006 survey respondents recalled seeing or hearing at least one First 5 Shasta Message, compared to only 63% in 2004. These 88% represent essentially 100% of individuals who access newspapers or the radio on a regular basis. About 20% of the sample members were very hard to reach because they do not access these media regularly, although two-thirds of these individuals did report seeing other media such as bus signs or posters. This supports the wisdom of using several different media strategies. Unlike the 2004 survey, where public service group members were more likely to remember the messages, this survey demonstrated no differences among business leaders, public service providers, and other citizens.
• Both radio and newspaper placements seemed about equally effective, with about 70% of the sample remembering seeing or hearing at least one First 5 Shasta message through each venue. Recognition of the specific messages by slogan was somewhat lower, at about 55% for newspapers and 60% for radio. The transit messages were remembered by 60% of the group, with specific messages remembered by 56%. However, the individual transit messages were less likely to be remembered in aided recall. These data suggest that in general, the message delivery strategies were equally effective in terms of recognition. In general, message recall was up over the 2004 results; for example, the radio message "little investments, big returns" was recalled by almost one-half of the respondents in 2006, compared to only 31% in 2004, and recognition of the "Shasta County's future depends on..." newspaper message jumped from 17% 2 years ago to 26% in this survey.
• While a larger proportion of this sample was aware of First 5 Shasta in 2006 than in 2004, this did not translate into a larger proportion being aware of the funding available for young children. However, the longer individuals were aware of First 5 Shasta, the more likely they were to be aware of this funding. Ratings on the "community collaboration and leadership" scale showed little change overall between survey administrations. That is, these key leaders did not perceive that the county and its leadership had improved in helping young children. When asked about their personal behaviour regarding support for policies and programmes for young children, however, important increases were recorded (although it is unclear to what extent this is attributable to the awareness campaign).

The evaluators conclude that, "Although all the data in this study are correlational and not directly causal, they are strong evidence that the media campaign is an important piece in advancing the First 5 Shasta policy agenda of helping young children."

Please contact Wendy MacNaughton at the address listed below to request a copy of the full evaluation document.