Incorporating Evaluation into Media Campaign Design

Research indicates that one in five women will be the victim of sexual violence in her lifetime (Tjaden & Thoennes 1998). Throughout the United States there exists an infrastructure of prevention programs and support networks for victims of sexual violence; however, funding and utilization are a constant struggle. Organizations have tried to maximize these scarce resources by using media campaigns to draw attention to the prevalence of sexual violence, the availability of services for victims and the need for community members to work together to reduce the incidences of sexual violence. Media campaigns enable organizations to deliver a message to a public audience through the use of posters, billboards, television, radio and internet advertisements. Media campaigns can be a relatively inexpensive way to reach an audience to introduce and promote general prevention messages (Wandersman & Florin, 2003; Nation et al., 2003) and can play a role in changing social norms, reinforcing positive behaviors, and supporting policy change. For the past two decades, advocacy organizations have used media campaigns to increase the public’s knowledge about sexual violence (Kitzinger & Hunt 1993; Fabiano, Perkins, Berkowitz, Linkenbach, & Stark, 2003). Yet, only a fraction of these campaigns have been formally evaluated, and there is limited information on the development and evaluation of media campaigns focused on reducing sexual violence. Corporations spend millions of dollars every day to advertise their products and services, and their marketing campaigns are extensively evaluated before they are unveiled to the public. Yet in the not-for-profit world, media campaign evaluation can fall by the wayside when resources are limited. Evaluation is an integral component of every stage of media campaign planning, design, and implementation, providing campaign creators with the opportunity to examine how their message resonates with the target audience. This paper attempts to provide brief information on core concepts relevant to media campaign evaluation strategies and showcases several sexual violence prevention media campaigns that have completed evaluations at various stages of the implementation process.