Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study was an effort to understand how the personality trait of sensation seeking, the cultural dimension of individualism and collectivism (I-C), and message stimulus affect the risk perceptions of college students with regards to gonorrhea infection. The above was accomplished using a 2 (HSS vs. LSS) X 2 (physical threat vs. social threat) X 2 (individualism vs. collectivism at the cultural level) X 2 (within-subject pretest vs. post-test) mixed repeated measures design conducted in four countries – Malaysia, Singapore, U.S. and England. Of the 911 college students who participated in the prescreening phase of the study, a total of 700 students completed the experiment. The results showed that the collectivistic participants had greater increase in posttest scores for perceived severity, perceived response efficacy, perceived self-efficacy, and knowledge about gonorrhea than individualistic participants. LSS expressed greater condom self-control than HSS. Participants exposed to the physical appeal message seemed to be able to recall the information better than participants exposed to the social appeal message. Participants from individualistic societies expressed greater perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived response efficacy, perceived self-efficacy, condom interpersonal impact and condom self-control than participants from collectivistic societies. In addition, participants from individualistic societies seemed to be able to recall the information better than participants from collectivistic societies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Survey letters are vehicles for conveying survey requests and informed consent messages, and have been known to increase cooperation rates (Groves & Couper, 1998 and Dillman, 2000). Other research indicates the mere presence of a survey letter may fail to yield significant differences in response rates (Lynn et al., 1989 and Dillman, 2000). Yet, the content of such letters is suspected to factor into mechanisms driving respondent cooperation. What do we really know about respondents’ perceptions of survey letters and their informational needs when asked to participate in a survey?

Research with letters (i.e., focus groups and cognitive interviews) from two demographic surveys produced findings used to codify the types of information sought by respondents in survey request situations. These findings also illustrate respondents’ processing strategies and reveal themes in the letters’ content that prevent respondents from comprehending messages as intended. Focus groups with field representatives generated findings about respondents’ common concerns upon first contact with an interviewer in a face-to-face survey. Cognitive interviews with respondents, using letters from both an interviewer-administered and a self-administered survey, produced information about respondents’ processing strategies, informational needs, and impediments to comprehension. Implications for crafting survey letters, which arose from this research, are presented.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Asch (1940) proposed that group standards change how people interpret objects under evaluation. This paper extends his intuition into a two-step model of social influence. In the first step, people interpret a given message differently with knowledge of how others interpret said message than if they did not know about anyone else’s interpretation. In the second step, people’s interpretation of a message, in turn, influences how their attitudes change. These experiments test (a) if knowing how others thought a newspaper article showed a particular bias in presenting an issue affects how participants, themselves, perceive the extremity of this article’s advocated position, and (b) if deviations in participants’ interpretation from a control group influences how they change their attitudes toward this issue. This two-step model coincides with participants’ reactions when they read newspaper articles opposing an issue, replicating across three message topics. A final experiment shows that the effect of this type of social influence increases when words in a newspaper article possess more ambiguity and disappears when they possess less ambiguity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The current study used a 2 (message source) x 3 (message concept) design to expose women (N=386) to one of three message concepts with a physician or a researcher as the source. Results indicate that mothers perceived researcher and physician sources as similarly credible, but their behavioral intentions to enact the outlined recommendations were higher with the researcher as the source. Perceived control also contributed to higher behavioral intentions to teach daughters how to keep a healthy diet, exercise regularly and avoid potentially harmful chemical exposure.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study starts with a simple question: “Everything else being equal, will people who exert more cognitive effort produce better messages?” To test this idea, we set up a high and a low personal relevance condition in order to influence people’s motivation to think more or less effortfully in an upward influence situation. Results revealed that individuals in the high personal relevance, compared in the low relevance condition, reported a higher degree of problem-solving goal importance and a higher level of cognitive effort. Their messages also tend to contain more reasons and more diverse of reasoning angles. Second, among the five distinct goals relevant to advice giving situations, problem-solving goal importance is found to be a significant predictor of message reasoning, such that the more individuals emphasize problem-solving goals, the more likely that their messages will demonstrate a higher level of reasoning. Third, while goal assessment initiates a message production process, cognitive effort to implement goals play an important mediation role in connecting goals and message features.