Health and Risk Communication

Researchers have long noted that movies and television shows seldom show drivers wearing seatbelts. In an analysis of high school youths’ exposure to such entertainment, APPC researchers Sally Dunlop and Dan Romer found that males with heavy exposure to such programming were less likely to think that their friends and school peers used seatbelts. Furthermore,

Using data from the Annenberg Sex and Media Study, current and former Annenberg Public Policy Center health communication researchers Jennifer A. Manganello, Vani R. Henderson, Amy Jordan, Nicole Trentacoste, Suzanne Martin, Michael Hennessy, and Martin Fishbein have published a paper that compares how teens and trained coders evaluate sexual content in media. “Adolescent Judgment of

In a report released online in the journal Tobacco Control, postdoctoral fellow Sally Dunlop and Dan Romer, director of APPC’s Adolescent Health Communication Institute, show how a dramatic increase in newspaper coverage of litigation against Philip Morris for its deceptive advertising for light cigarettes was associated with a decline in misperceptions about the benefits of

A study coordinated by researchers at APPC demonstrates the effectiveness of community-based screening to combat the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in high-risk adolescents. The study found that African-American youth ages 14 to 17 who were identified as positive for at least one of three STIs subsequently reduced their number of sexual partners and

APPC scholars Amy Bleakley, Ph.D., Michael Hennessy, Ph.D., and Martin Fishbein, Ph.D., published a paper, “Predicting Preferences for Types of Sex Education in US Schools” (Sexuality Research and Social Policy), identifying characteristics related to sex education policy preferences in the United States. The authors used data from the Annenberg National Health Communication Survey.   Article

In a newly released study conducted by APPC and published in Prevention Science online, researchers analyze data from the National Annenberg Survey of Youth showing that adolescents ages 14 to 22 do exert control over their risk-seeking tendencies. Although such tendencies tend to peak during adolescence, youth who can delay gratification are also able to