The effectiveness of bundled health messages on recall

Abstract

Purpose: This study is an initial step in determining the effectiveness of bundling preconception messages on short-term recall in a health communication intervention.

Design: A six-cell quasi-experiment with control was employed.

Setting: Mall intercept interviews were conducted in three southern cities.

Intervention: Six professionally developed brochures with preconception health messages.

Subjects: 687 women who were between 18 and 36 years old and who reported that they planned to be pregnant within the next 5 years.

Measures: Aided and unaided message recall.

Analysis: Analysis of variance, pair-wise t-tests.

Results: The results suggest ways to combine health messages in an attempt to maximize the resources that individual programs have for communication.

Conclusion: Combining messages, up to four, should be considered.