Reflection on my interview, week 4, and module 1

After completing my interview with my Gatekeeper I started analyzing her answers to my questions. I then used her answers along with my analysis to fill out the segmentation table. While completing the table I had one major reoccurring thought... what if our target population doesn't feel the need to change, want to change, care about changing, etc. This leaves us in the pre-contemplation stage of change and that means two things... first and most importantly there is little behavior change that can be accomplished when your target population doesn't want to change and has no motivation to change. Secondly we will be forced to tailor our campaign to providing knowledge and awareness. After realizing this I read Chelsea's blog and a-ha, she feels the same way.

Week 4-
During week four I presented my article by Maddock. I feel that I had a much stronger understanding of formative research due to it being my week to present. What I mean by this is I read my article and then I dissected my article and then I did research on my article. By the time I presented I had a complete understanding of audience segmentation, identifying target behaviors, preproduction research, and production testing. I do feel it is extremely beneficial to know your audience and pre-test before implementing any type of campaign or intervention. I think interviews and focus groups are two of the best ways to do this. I have experience as being the moderator in a focus group and I learned through that experience that excellent and useful data can be gathered in the matter of 2 hours of less. It's a great and inexpensive way to get first hand data. I also liked how the articles incorporated a few of the health behavior theories into their research. The article on syphilis was an excellent and fun example of health media campaigns that alter their message based on the intended audience to be effective.

Module 1-

What I got from the first month of Health Communication:
During week two it all started coming back to me... theories is what I'm referring to. I took last semester off (not as a choice but SDSU did not offer the one course I still needed to graduate... that being PH 633). So, I remembered that I had learned A LOT of theories a couple semesters ago but my brain was a bit cloudy as to the steps to most of the theories.

Jumping back to week one... first day of class and an assignment was due the next week *wow, no time was wasted... time to get reacquainted with the local coffee shop* Our assignment was to define communication, define health communication and then observe. I think it was an interesting assignment but I think the table we had to complete could have been designed differently to get more out of the assignment. Week one was mostly intros and a brief discussion on communication.

During week 2 we all talked about our assignment and then jumped into theories. We spent time discussing The Health Belief Model and the Stages of Change Theory... two of my favorite health theories. I have to admit that I'm still very confused on low and high involvement and what is what. I think maybe there could be better examples or a different way of explaining it that would help me comprehend the concept. If anyone can help, I'm all ears but the concept is still not making sense to me.

Week 3, surprise… more theories. We discussed social networks, The Social Cognitive Theory, Process of Adopting Innovations, Stages of Diffusion, the 4 P's and many many more topics. My point is that we discussed several topics and I think it's hard to really think and comprehend when just briefly touching on too many topics. After taking semester and semester of classes, the courses that drive the most participation are those that have one or two major topics and then you have time to really dive into the topic. I think we discuss so much in such a short period that it is hard to stir up communication and feedback by skimming over so much. And when the class does start participating it puts us behind schedule and then we're rushing through the rest of the material we need to get through by the end of the class period. I noticed this during week 3 and 4.

On a different note and more related to the material covered in class during week 3… I am reading Made to Stick for my extra credit reading and it really made me think a little bit harder and deeper about the Process of Adopting an Innovation. Like the book The Tipping Point it talks about the stickiness factor. I think innovations excel when they have a sticky factor, like the example of the ipod. I also think that our target behavior has the stickiness factor (energy drinks) and I think it will be interesting to do a health campaign on a product that did well when applying it to the Process of Adopting an Innovation. Energy drinks also fit the 4 P's model... darn it, why did we pick such a successful product that had genius marketing campaigns to try to market against. This will be a challenge.