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Year Awarded: 2008
Project Leaders:
Teresa Mastin, Department of Advertising, Public Relations, and Retailing, Jessica Barnes, University Outreach and Engagement, Jason Almerigi, University Outreach and Engagement, Gloria Bourdon, Health, Safety, and Nutrition Services Genesee Intermediate School District
Project Description:
Existing research supports a claim made in the Healthy People 2010 report that school-related venues are practical delivery outlets for health information. For instance, healthy nutritional messages delivered through the public address system had a positive impact on students' lunch choices. The current proposal, which addresses nutritional messages tailored for school-aged children, takes this approach a step further by positioning students as the primary creators of nutritional messages and placing the messages in a prime location where children spend a considerable portion of their school day-school buses. Involving children and adolescents in the message development phase ensures that they understand the messages and perceive them to be relevant. Placing the messages in a location where children are a captive audience during two significant portions of each school day serves to reinforce the messages, as well as ensuring that the message content has the greatest potential to positively affect student's nutritional attitudes and behaviors. The theoretical foundation of this proposal is Petty and Cacioppo's (1986) elaboration likelihood model, a cognitive information processing model, in which message recipients travel either a central or peripheral route to attitude change.
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