Adolescent exposures to tobacco imagery in movies
The theatre-only estimate of adolescent exposure to smoking imagery in movies in the United States is lower than population estimates of exposure derived from studies of nationally representative adolescents, including exposures in theatres, video, television programming or Internet sources. In general, these methods reflect market reach analyses to assess the success of marketing campaigns.
According to the method reported by Sargent et al in the United States, movie viewership among a randomly selected representative sample of adolescents (aged 10–14 years in 2002) recruited by telephone was assessed through a standardized survey. Other researchers have used Internet-based panel samples for survey research. In these studies, the proportion viewing a particular movie (selected from a list of top-grossing movies seen by the selected respondent sample) was then multiplied by the total number of US adolescents aged 10–14 years (20.88 million) to obtain an estimate of the total number of US adolescents who had seen the movie.
This is then a measure of “reach” for exposure to the selected movies. Next, gross smoking impressions were determined by multiplying the estimate of the number of US adolescents who had seen the movie by the number of smoking occurrences in the movie, enumerated and assessed as positive or negative through direct observation by trained viewers. Per capita gross impressions of movie smoking were then obtained by dividing the total number of gross smoking impressions across all of the movies in the sample by the total US population of adolescents aged 10–14 years. This measure is similar to that used to determine the success of marketing campaigns and is similar to the “gross rating point” for those campaigns. Through these methods it was estimated that a total of 13.9 billion tobacco impressions were received by this 10–14 year-old age group from any media platform, an average of 665 tobacco impressions per capita. However, 27 ANNEXES References:
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Even this type of estimate does not capture the full intensity of adolescents’ exposure to smoking in movies because the survey did not capture repeated exposures to the same film, whether in theatres or on video. Media habits, and thus the mix of sources for onscreen exposure to tobacco imagery, vary from nation to nation. Media usage also differs within societies by age, gender and socioeconomic status. Shaped by family and cultural settings, it also shifts over time as new media options emerge and spread. For example, of 30 countries surveyed in 2004–5, Thailand (a middle-income country at US$ 8470 per capita in 2005) reported watching twice as much television per week, at 22.4 hours, as Mexico (US$ 10 560 per capita income) at 11.6 hours. Viewing videos and DVDs in informal household or admission-paid settings is probably the most frequent modality used by adolescents. However, data on the age of DVD viewers and on how often DVDs are watched (along with cable and satellite viewings) are not currently available. The video industry’s own market research appears to focus only on retail sales.
