Colorado State Study Sheds Light On Adolescents' Response To Beer Ads
Tuesday, October 14, 1997
FORT COLLINS--In a comprehensive study of alcohol
advertising and youth, a team of Colorado State University
researchers has found strong ethnic and gender differences in the
way adolescents respond to television beer advertising.
The five-year study revealed that white adolescent males are
more receptive to beer ads containing sports-related themes than
their female counterparts. Overall, females were more likely to
respond negatively to beer ads than males.
The study, funded by a $400,000 grant from the National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, also indicated that
both male and female adolescents who responded positively to beer
ads were more likely to use alcohol or say they planned to drink
alcohol as adults. Adolescents who responded negatively to the
ads or were more likely to criticize messages contained in those
ads also were less likely to use alcohol or have plans to drink
alcohol when they reached legal drinking age.
Researchers hope findings from the study, to be delivered in
a final report to NIAAA headquarters this week, will help health
educators more effectively teach adolescents about the risks of
alcohol use and enable them to more skeptically view alcohol
advertisements.
The findings could also help policy makers make more
informed decisions regarding the use of beer ads with sports-
related themes and other types of ads in television sports
programs. The brewing industry spends an estimated $1.5 billion a
year on television beer advertising. Previous studies have shown
that over 1.5 alcohol ads appear per hour during television
sports programs; many of those ads incorporate sports- or
athletic-related themes.
"Brewers are criticized for putting beer ads in sports
programming, especially when there are minors--particularly
adolescent males--watching those programs," said Michael Slater,
the project's lead researcher and an associate professor of
journalism and technical communication at Colorado State. "Our
results support public and official concerns that sports content
in beer ads increases the ads' appeal to underage youth. However,
they do not support concerns that sports programming might prime
adolescents to be more receptive to beer ads."
Also participating in the study from Colorado State was
Donna Rouner and Jim Van Leuven, professors in the department of
journalism and technical communication; Frederick Beauvais,
research scientist at the university's Tri-Ethnic Center for
Prevention Research; psychology professor Kevin Murphy; and
Melanie Domenech-Rodriguez, a doctoral candidate.
The study involved 401 male and female Anglo and Latino
adolescents ranging in age from 12 to 18. Each participant viewed
two television beer commercials with sports content, two beer ads
without sports content and two non-beer advertisements. Half of
the ads were seen during excerpts of television sports programs
and half were seen during entertainment programs. A total of 72
ads, 24 of each type, were randomly selected from network
television programs for use in the study. Twelve entertainment
programs and 24 sports programs also were randomly selected.
Participants wrote down their comments regarding the ads they
saw; their responses were extensively coded and analyzed.
Other findings from the study include:
* About 40 percent of the respondents reported overall that
at least one person shown in the four beer ads they saw appeared
to be under the age of 21. Slater said this finding is
significant because it suggests that beer industry guidelines are
not achieving their goal of ensuring that people shown in beer
advertisements consistently appear to be 21 or older.
* Sixty percent of junior high participants who indicated
they had been drunk at least once identified people in the ads to
be under the legal drinking age of 21, compared with 40 percent
of junior high students who had not been drunk. Overall, junior
high students more often believed that underage people appeared
in the beer ads than senior high students.
"The relatively high percentage of junior high school
drinkers who perceive the people in beer ads to be underage is
troubling," Slater said. "It is in junior high school that many
young people make their first decisions about experimenting with
alcohol. The fundamental cause for concern is that young people
who already use alcohol might use their perception about underage
people in the ads to reinforce their behavior."
* Latino responses to the advertisements were very similar
overall to that of Anglos. However, the link between positive
responses to beer ads and alcohol use or plans to drink alcohol
was weaker among Latinos than among Anglos. An additional study
suggested that Latinos may enjoy Anglo-oriented beer
advertisements, but may find them less relevant as sources of
social information.
* Types of critical comments about the beer advertisements
varied by gender, a student's use or non-use of alcohol and, to a
lesser extent, by age and ethnicity. For example, females were
more likely to say that a beer ad's content was inappropriate;
junior high students who had been drunk at least once were much
less likely to make any critical comments about beer ads.
Slater said the research team is currently analyzing the
data from this study to see how sexual content in the ads shape
responses among both male and female adolescents. In a separate,
$665,000 study from the National Institutes of Health, Slater is
examining the effectiveness of alcohol use warnings in television
commercials. Preliminary findings from that research are expected
next year.
This page © 1997-1998 World Wide Express, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Many news stories on RamLine.com come from the Colorado State University Public Relations Office. You can get copies of the news releases directly by filling out this form.