Oklahoma Tobacco Research Center, Stephenson Cancer Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Vermont Center on Behavior and Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont.
J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2019 Jul;80(4):415-422. doi: 10.15288/jsad.2019.80.415.
Marijuana use is associated with negative cognitive and health outcomes and risky driving. Given the rapidly changing policies regarding legal recreational and medicinal marijuana use, it is important to examine what types of marijuana prevention messages may be effective in minimizing such outcomes. This study examined cognitive and affective responses to anti-marijuana public health messages in a sample of adult marijuana users and nonusers to determine the correlates of perceived message effectiveness.
Participants (N = 203; mean age = 37.7 years) were adult marijuana users and nonusers recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (August 2017). After completing self-report measures of marijuana use, they viewed six anti-marijuana messages presented in a random order, addressing marijuana's effects in each of three topic areas: cognitive performance, driving, and adverse health outcomes (e.g., two messages per topic). Participants completed assessments of cognitive and affective perceptions after viewing each message. For each message topic, a linear regression model was used to determine which cognitive and affective perceptions were most predictive of perceived message effectiveness.
For all message topics, nonusers perceived the messages as more effective than did users (p < .001). In the majority of analyses, greater message effectiveness was associated with increased perceived harm of marijuana and increased liking of the message. For driving and health messages, greater message effectiveness was also significantly correlated with lower pleasant affect.
The findings suggest that audience perceptions may be uniquely predictive of message effectiveness, depending on the topic.
大麻使用与认知和健康不良后果以及危险驾驶有关。鉴于娱乐和药用大麻使用的政策迅速变化，重要的是要研究哪些类型的大麻预防信息可能有助于最小化这些后果。本研究在一组成年大麻使用者和非使用者中检查了反大麻公共卫生信息的认知和情感反应，以确定感知信息有效性的相关因素。
参与者（N = 203；平均年龄为 37.7 岁）是通过亚马逊 Mechanical Turk（2017 年 8 月）招募的成年大麻使用者和非使用者。在完成大麻使用的自我报告措施后，他们以随机顺序观看了六个反大麻信息，分别针对三个主题领域的大麻影响：认知表现、驾驶和不良健康后果（例如，每个主题有两条信息）。参与者在观看每条消息后完成对认知和情感感知的评估。对于每个消息主题，使用线性回归模型确定哪些认知和情感感知对感知消息有效性的预测性最强。
对于所有消息主题，非使用者都认为这些消息比使用者更有效（p <.001）。在大多数分析中，更大的消息有效性与大麻的感知危害增加和对消息的喜爱增加有关。对于驾驶和健康信息，消息的有效性也与较低的愉快度显著相关。
研究结果表明，取决于主题，受众的看法可能是消息有效性的独特预测因素。
