Despite the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s nine-year effort to debunk the connection, newspapers continue to perpetuate the myth that suicides rise during the end-of-year holiday period. According to an analysis of news reporting during last year’s (2008-09) holiday period, the proportion of stories that supported the myth remained at approximately the same level as during
Health and Risk Communication
APPC Health Communication Scholars Published in Journal of Sex Research
Michael Hennessy, Ph.D., research analysis manager at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, was lead author of a paper, “Estimating the Longitudinal Association Between Adolescent Sexual Behavior and Exposure to Sexual Media Content,” published in the Journal of Sex Research. Co-authors were APPC’s Dr. Amy Bleakley, Professor Martin Fishbein (principal investigator of the study), and Dr.
Findings released on mass media as an HIV-prevention strategy
In a study just released in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Adolescent Communication Institute (ACI) and five other universities along with a Philadelphia media development firm report that a mass media program directed to African American youth ages 14 to 18 reduced sexual risk behavior, especially among
ACI receives funding supplement from NIMH
The National Institute of Mental Health’s Division on AIDS has awarded a supplement to an ongoing research trial coordinated by APPC’s Adolescent Communication Institute (ACI). The funds, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will help to fund follow-up assessments of a trial testing the efficacy of preventive mass media messages delivered
APPC’s Martin Fishbein publishes new volume on theory of reasoned action
In their new volume, Predicting and Changing Behavior: The Reasoned Action Approach, Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen describe and update the reasoned action approach, the groundbreaking theoretical construct for understanding human behavior that has provided the basis for more than 1,000 journal articles in the three decades since they introduced it. The authors consider the
APPC Hosts First Conference in Its New Building
New Media and Suicide Prevention On August 25-26, the Annenberg Public Policy Center hosted its first conference in its new home on the Penn Campus. The event convened national media and mental health experts to discuss Reporting on Suicide: Recommendations for the Media (2001), consensus recommendations developed by APPC’s Adolescent Communication Institute (ACI) in partnership