Does Background Music Really Help Radio Commercials? The Effect of Involvement on Ad Recall

This study tested the effects of background music on the recall of radio commercials. Free and aided recall were significantly higher for subjects who heard the commercials containing no background music in the talk program compared to that of subjects hearing the commercials containing no background music in the music program. Furthermore, involvement level appears to be a factor in influencing recall. The involvement level with the music program was low compared to the involvement level with the talk program and this seems to have a mitigating effect on the recall of the commercials.     

Effects of imagery‐eliciting on recognition and recall for radio commercials

This experiment suggests that recognition and recall are better for radio commercials with imagery‐eliciting copy than for commercials without imagery‐eliciting copy.     

Enhancing responses to television advertisements via the transfer of residual arousal from prior programming

Viewers rated television commercials seen two and one‐half to four minutes after highly arousing film segments as significantly more effective and enjoyable than the same commercials seen after less arousing programming.     

Contrasts in presidential campaign commercials of 1976

This study examines the 1976 primary and general election television commercials of Jimmy Carter and Jerry Ford. Based principally on interviews with the creators of the advertising and on repeated viewings of the numerous commercials acquired by Professor L. Patrick Devlin, the study investigates what was shown and why. In the concluding section, analytic and evaluative observations are made.     

MeSH and text-word search strategies: precision,recall, and their implications for library instruction

Objective:This study compared the recall and precision of MeSH-term versus text-word searching to better understand psychosocial MeSH terms and to provide guidance on whether to include both strategies in an information literacy session or how much time should be spent on teaching each search strategy.Methods:Using the relevant recall method, a total of 3,162 resources were considered and evaluated to form a gold standard set of 1,521 relevant resources. We compared resources discussing psychosocial aspects of children and adolescents living with type 1 diabetes using two search strategies: text-word strategy versus MeSH-term strategy. The frequency of MeSH terms, the MeSH hierarchy, and elements of each search strategy were also examined.Results:Using the 1,521 relevant articles, we found that the text-word search strategy had 54% recall, while the MeSH-term strategy had 75% recall. Also, the precision of the text-word strategy was 34.4%, while the precision of the MeSH-term strategy was 47.7%. Therefore, the MeSH-term search strategy yielded both greater recall and greater precision. The MeSH strategy was also more complicated in design and usage than the text-word strategy.Conclusions:This study demonstrates the effectiveness of text-word and MeSH search strategies on precision and recall. The combination of text-word and MeSH strategies is recommended to achieve the most comprehensive results. These results support the idea that MeSH or a similar controlled vocabulary should be taught to experienced and knowledgeable students and practitioners who require a myriad of resources for their literature searches.     

Effects of music on source evaluations

Dr. Simpkins is an assistant professor in the department of advertising at Michigan State University, while Mr. Smith is a media analyst at Campbell‐Ewald, Inc. in Detroit. The research that follows offers some useful advice to producers of commercials and other material using a musical background.     

Effect of speed of presentation on recall of television messages

The study investigated the effect of two techniques for reinforcing the message in television news stories: visual‐verbal redundancy and verbal recapitulations. Impact of the techniques on learning was examined with a 2 × 2 factorial design experiment (N = 80), using a five story newscast. It was hypothesized that recapping would have a beneficial effect on understanding, based on its highlighting function, while a redundancy effect on recall was expected for visuals that reinforced words. As expected, high visual‐verbal redundancy produced greater viewer recall than did low redundancy. The addition of summary oral recaps improved understanding.     

Updated generic search filters for finding studies of adverse drug effects in Ovid medline and Embase may retrieve up to 90% of relevant studies

Background

The most current objectively derived search filters for adverse drug effects are 15 years old and other strategies have not been developed and tested empirically.

Objective

To develop and validate search filters to retrieve evidence on adverse drug effects from Ovid medline and Ovid Embase.

Methods

We identified systematic reviews of adverse drug effects in Epistemonikos. From these reviews, we collated their included studies which we then randomly divided into three tests and one validation set of records. We constructed a search strategy to maximise relative recall using word frequency analysis with test set one. This search strategy was then refined using test sets two and three and validated on the final set of records.

Results

Of 107 systematic reviews which met our inclusion criteria, 1948 unique included studies were available from medline and 1980 from Embase. Generic adverse drug effects searches in medline and Embase achieved 90% and 89% relative recall, respectively. When specific adverse effects terms were added recall was improved.

Conclusion

We have derived and validated search filters that retrieve around 90% of records with adverse drug effects data in medline and Embase. The addition of specific adverse effects terms is required to achieve higher recall.     

New scheme of communication: an exploratory study of interactivity and multimedia use in Chinese j-blogs and the implications

Major cultural values in Chinese and Indian TV commercials were identified in this content analysis. Commercials in both countries were found emphasizing modernity over tradition as a dominant value. Chinese commercials used more traditional values while Indian commercials reflected a more Western value orientation. Foreign brands used modernity more frequently than domestic brands. Foreign brands of Eastern origin used modernity even more often than those of Western origin. Product category emerged as the most important variable affecting cultural values in both countries' commercials. While contributing to international advertising research, this study provides implications for international advertising practice.     

Using mass media in the presidential primaries: Effects on candidate issue knowledge and confidence in judging candidate viability

The role of mass media in the presidential primaries has not been examined in the same fashion as in the presidential general elections, congressional elections, and gubernatorial elections. This study is based on a survey (face‐to‐face interviews) of 392 adults randomly selected from a city with a population of 444,000 during the 1996 presidential primaries. The results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses show that television news programs increase learning about candidate issue policies. People's confidence in judging which candidate has a better chance to win the party's nomination is influenced by reading of newspaper campaign stories, viewing of the campaign commercials, and their attention to the campaign news on TV. This study enriches our understanding of media effects in the presidential primaries.     

The soaps: What's on and who cares?

This two‐pronged study analyzed soap opera content, centering on demographics, problems, conversations and sex behaviors, and surveyed soap viewers to determine viewing motives, involvement, and possible effects of soap viewing.     

How people tell an ad story: Western vs. Asian styles

The likelihood that people tell stories in advertising, as well as the type of stories they tell, may reflect their cultural variation. A content analysis shows that commercials in Taiwan are more likely to employ narrative appeals than are commercials in the United States, and the story structures in Taiwanese commercials are less likely to be well-developed. Narrative ads in the two cultures also differ on three content dimensions: problems to be solved, psychological benefits from solving the problem, and the emotion experienced in the process. The discussion of such differences relies on an integrated explanatory framework.     

Message defensiveness,efficacy, and health‐related behavioral intentions

This study examined the effects of (response and self) efficacy on defensive message processing and behavioral intentions. Hypothesized predictions were generated from the extended parallel process model (Witte, 1992). The results suggest that people with low self‐efficacy will engage in greater defensive message processing in the form of counter‐arguing. In addition, people with low response and self‐efficacy will have lower behavioral intentions than people with high efficacy. Implications and limitations are discussed.     

On the Deceptive Effectiveness of Labeled and Unlabeled Advertorial Formats

This experiment investigates the effects of an advertorial message on 4 dimensions of reader involvement. The use of the advertorial format was found to have increased participants' perceived message relevance, attention to written message, message elaboration, and message recall over the use of a standard advertisement format. Responses to labeled and unlabeled versions of the same advertorial did not vary significantly. Although participants perceived both labeled and unlabeled advertorials to be advertisements, rather than editorial material, more than two thirds of the participants who were exposed to a labeled advertorial failed to recall the presence of the label. Our findings indicate that the advertorial format fools readers into greater involvement with the advertising message and that the presence of advertorial labels may not be particularly effective in alerting consumers to the true nature of the message.     

The effectiveness of health disclosures within children's television commercials

In a study involving 164 children ages 3 to 14, the effectiveness of incorporating health information disclosures into actual television commercials was tested. Results indicated that most children were able to recall and make sense of such disclosures.     

Books on broadcasting in the library of congress: Programming and audience research

Because advertising is the bread‐and‐butter of broadcasting in the United States, any attempt to limit the number and length of commercials is, bound to meet with strong opposition. One such unsuccessful attempt was made by the FCC only four years ago, but already memories of the events and maneuverings that swirled around this proposal are fading. Lawrence D. Longley investigated this topic in connection with his doctoral dissertation on “The Politics of Broadcasting” which is nearing completion at Vanderbilt University. Mr. Longley is instructor in the Department of Government at Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin.     

Power: The rhetoric of mobilization

Power comes from the unification of mass. Physical unity is a result of psychic unity. Psychic unity is the product of two kinds of mobilization—episodic and systemic. Episodic mobilization is the temporary unification of people for a limited end; Systemic mobilization involves the control of a whole field of behavior. A major form of mobilization—ideology—is discussed at length.     

Performance of conceptual framework elements for the retrieval of qualitative health literature: a case study

Objective:A growing volume of studies address methods for performing systematic reviews of qualitative studies. One such methodological aspect is the conceptual framework used to structure the review question and plan the search strategy for locating relevant studies. The purpose of this case study was to evaluate the retrieval potential of each element of conceptual frameworks in qualitative systematic reviews in the health sciences.Methods:The presence of elements from conceptual frameworks in publication titles, abstracts, and controlled vocabulary in CINAHL and PubMed was analyzed using a set of qualitative reviews and their included studies as a gold standard. Using a sample of 101 publications, we determined whether particular publications could be retrieved if a specific element from the conceptual framework was used in the search strategy.Results:We found that the relative recall of conceptual framework elements varied considerably, with higher recall for patient/population (99%) and research type (97%) and lower recall for intervention/phenomenon of interest (74%), outcome (79%), and context (61%).Conclusion:The use of patient/population and research type elements had high relative recall for qualitative studies. However, other elements should be used with great care due to lower relative recall.     

Powers Reserved to the People: A Guide for Researching Initiatives and Referendums in North Dakota

SUMMARY

The right of the people in North Dakota to initiate or refer laws is guaranteed by Article III of the North Dakota Constitution. This guide provides a short history of the initiative and referendum process in North Dakota; continues with the current petition process and recall practice; includes selected statutes and case law; provides annotations for selected secondary materials; provides selected LexisNexis and Westlaw database identifiers; and concludes with selected Web sites useful for researching initiatives and referendums in North Dakota.     

Competition for Viewers and Advertisers in a TV Oligopoly

Abstract

This study considers a model of a TV oligopoly where TV channels transmit advertising and viewers dislike such commercials. It is shown that advertisers make a lower profit the larger the number of TV channels. If TV channels are sufficiently close substitutes, there will be underprovision of advertising relative to social optimum. This study also finds that the more viewers dislike ads, the more likely it is that welfare is increasing in the number of advertising-financed TV channels. A publicly owned TV channel can partly correct market distortions, in some cases, by having a larger amount of advertising than private TV channels. It may even have advertising in cases where advertising is wasteful per se.