Science in the Public Sphere Program, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA.
School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
J Epidemiol Community Health. 2018 Nov;72(11):1059-1063. doi: 10.1136/jech-2018-210676. Epub 2018 Aug 6.
Literature on health promotion evaluation and public understanding of health suggests the importance of investigating behaviour over time in conjunction with information environment trends as a way of understanding programme impact. We analysed population response to online promotion of an educational tool built by the Ask About Aspirin campaign in the USA to inform people about aspirin as a preventive aid.
We collected 156 weeks of time series data on audience behaviour, namely use of a self-assessment tool. We then used the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) modelling to predict that outcome as a function of paid search engine advertising, paid social media promotion and general search interest in aspirin.
Through ARIMA modelling of tool engagement data adjusted for outcome series autocorrelation, we found a significant effect of online promotional effort on audience behaviour. Total paid search advertising positively predicted weekly total of individuals who started using the self-assessment tool, coefficient=0.023, t=3.28, p=0.001. This effect did not appear to be an artefact of broader secular trends, as Google search data on the topic of aspirin use did not add explanatory power in the final model nor did controlling for general search interest eliminate the significant coefficient for paid search promotion.
Results hold implications both for educational tool development and for understanding health promotion campaign effects. We witnessed substantial but ephemeral effects on tool use as a function of paid search efforts, suggesting prioritisation of efforts to affect search engine results as a dissemination tactic.
健康促进评估和公众对健康的理解方面的文献表明，结合信息环境趋势调查随时间变化的行为，是了解计划影响的一种方式。我们分析了公众对美国阿司匹林问询活动在线推广教育工具的反应，以了解人们对阿司匹林作为预防辅助手段的看法。
我们收集了 156 周的受众行为时间序列数据，即使用自我评估工具的情况。然后，我们使用自回归综合移动平均（ARIMA）模型，根据付费搜索引擎广告、付费社交媒体推广以及人们对阿司匹林的普遍搜索兴趣来预测该结果。
通过对因变量系列自相关进行调整的工具参与数据的 ARIMA 建模，我们发现在线推广工作对受众行为有显著影响。总付费搜索广告正向预测每周开始使用自我评估工具的人数，系数=0.023，t=3.28，p=0.001。这一效果似乎并非更广泛的长期趋势的结果，因为关于阿司匹林使用的谷歌搜索数据在最终模型中并没有增加解释力，也没有控制一般搜索兴趣来消除付费搜索推广的显著系数。
研究结果对教育工具的开发和理解健康促进活动的效果都具有启示意义。我们观察到工具使用的显著但短暂的效果，这表明应优先考虑影响搜索引擎结果的努力，将其作为一种传播策略。
