Author Description

Formative research is an important part of health communication efforts, as messages should be developed based on input from the target audience and receive target audience feedback before being used in the field. In this project, we document the use of focus groups for message pretesting among college women with two sets of messages about alcohol and the hook-up culture. Messages were then pilot-tested in a lab experiment. Taken together, this research helps to highlight how the use of both qualitative formative research and quantitative pilot testing can be useful for health communication intervention development.