Yeaton W H, Smith D, Rogers K
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48106.
Health Educ Q. 1990 Summer;17(2):223-34. doi: 10.1177/109019819001700208.
This research assessed the ability of a sample of persons on a college campus to understand media reports of health research. Three or four articles on each of five contemporary health topics (dietary cholesterol and heart disease, treatment for breast cancer, starch blockers, drug treatment for heart disease, test tube skin) were selected from widely circulated newspapers (e.g., New York Times) and magazines (e.g., Newsweek). A sample of 144 college students responded to content-based and application-based questions derived from photocopies of these popular press articles. The overall rate of reader misunderstanding approached 40% and generally fell between one third and one half for each of 16 articles representing five health topics. Several strengths and weaknesses of the research are considered as they relate to the accuracy of estimated error rates and to the generality of study findings. The implications of these findings for other areas of health (e.g., AIDS risk factor research) are also discussed.
本研究评估了大学校园里的一群人理解健康研究媒体报道的能力。从广泛发行的报纸（如《纽约时报》）和杂志（如《新闻周刊》）中，选取了关于五个当代健康主题（膳食胆固醇与心脏病、乳腺癌治疗、淀粉阻滞剂、心脏病药物治疗、试管皮肤）的三到四篇文章。144名大学生样本针对这些大众媒体文章复印件中基于内容和基于应用的问题做出了回应。读者误解的总体发生率接近40%，在代表五个健康主题的16篇文章中，每篇文章的误解率通常在三分之一到二分之一之间。研究的几个优点和缺点被视为与估计错误率的准确性以及研究结果的普遍性相关。还讨论了这些发现对其他健康领域（如艾滋病风险因素研究）的影响。
