Are the Media Enabled Anti-tobacco Campaigns Effective? A Pilot Study

Abstract

Introduction: Globally, tobacco is a major cause of increased morbidity and mortality rates due to oral carcinoma. Despite the efforts of Government of India on anti-tobacco advertisements and campaigns, there is an increase in the number of consumers whereas the percentage who have attempted to quit the habit stands at a mere 3%-5%. Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of media enabled Government of India initiated anti-tobacco and anti-smoking advertisement and campaigns and understand behavioural/psychological response among tobacco users and non-users towards such campaigns. Materials and Methods: This was a questionnaire-based study. A total of randomly selected general public, 250 young adults in the age group of 18 to 25 years, 158-tobacco users and 92-nontobacco users, in South Bengaluru, India was interviewed on one to one basis in the study. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data on basic personal details, specific questions related to Government of India initiated anti-tobacco advertisements, and psychological tests namely Sentence completion test, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and Inkblot test were used to check the responses among tobacco and anti-tobacco users. The SPSS version 22.0 software IBM, Corp was used to do the descriptive statistical analysis and the level of significance was set at p<0.05. Results: Of the overall 250 participants, 63.2% were tobacco product users and 36.8% were non-tobacco users. All 100% participants watched the Government of India initiated antitobacco and anti-smoking campaigns. Among overall subjects 49% gave up watching the advertisements due to fear or monotony, 23% of them reduced watching, and 28% felt like giving up the use. Among tobacco users, 48.73% discontinued the habit after watching the advertisements and 51.27% continued with the habit. The Government of India initiated anti-tobacco advertisements were ineffective in 65.19% of the tobacco users. The non-tobacco user group gave a favourable response in Sentence Completion Test and Rorschach Inkblot Test. There was no significant difference in the response seen in the TAT. Chi-Square test analysis was applied to determine the statistical significance between the psychological tests and the effectiveness of Government of India initiated anti-tobacco advertisements among tobacco and non-tobacco users. Conclusion: It was observed that the Government of India initiated anti-tobacco and anti-smoking advertisements had more favourable response among the non-tobacco users whereas, with the current tobacco users, it did not have the desired impact. Psychological tests like TAT was statistically significant with respect to the effectiveness of advertisements (p<0.05) in non-tobacco users.

Keywords

• anti-tobacco advertisements
• inkblot test
• non-tobacco
• sentence completion test
• thematic apperception test