Pretesting the Channels of Distribution for a Nutrition Education Leaflet

• Published in: Scandinavian Journal of Social Medicine
• Main Authors: Räsänen, Leena, Ahlström, Antti, Rimpelä, Matti
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 1974
• Subjects: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health; karelia*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/140349487400200305; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/140349487400200305

In connection with an extensive health education project in Finland, the so-called North Karelia Project, a pretest program was carried out with the object of studying the relative effectiveness of three different channels as disseminators of a nutrition education leaflet addressed to housewives. A total of 256 20–49-year-old housewives were interviewed in the investigation. The telephone interview method was shown to be suitable for this type of information acquisition despite the problems arising in telephone number sampling. Statistically significant differences were noted between the channels used. Almost half of the leaflets taken home from school by pupils failed to reach the housewife, whereas the loss rate in cases where the leaflet was sent as a circular letter or as a supplement to the local newspaper was below 30%. Although the majority of all those who received the leaflet said that they had read it, only a quarter of these could be said to have familiarized themselves with the contents of the leaflet. There was only a weak correlation between background variables and reading of the leaflet or recall of its contents. The results indicate that the efficacy of distributing single educational leaflets is questionable, but the use of leaflets could be defended as part of a largescale information campaign.