Perceived Effectiveness of Vaping Prevention Ads Among Adolescents and Young Adults

Health communication campaigns are a scientific approach for preventing and reducing tobacco product use among adolescents. Although a growing number of studies have examined the effects of e-cigarette communication among young adults, there is only a modest number of published studies targeting adolescents. There is little information about the objective features of vaping prevention video ads. Additionally, the follow-up study will explore how ad features are associated with recognition.

Setting: This study is an online survey of adolescents and young adults (age 13-20) who are susceptible to vaping or who currently vape and live in the United States.

Recruitment and Informed Consent: Adolescent and young adult participants will be recruited by Qualtrics Services. Participants who are 18 to 20 years old and are eligible for the study will view a consent form as part of the survey and check a box to indicate that they agree to participate in the study. For minor participants, Qualtrics will recruit parents of 13-17-year-olds, so they will receive the survey invitation with the parental permission/consent form. From there, parents will be asked to pass the survey to their child. Once the participant has completed the consent/assent process, they will be able to begin the survey.

Procedures: up to 3,500 adolescents and young adults who are susceptible to vaping or currently vape will be randomized to view 5 randomly selected ads from a pool of vaping prevention video ads identified from previous study activities. Participants will be screened for susceptibility to vaping or current vape use. Participants will then answer questions on demographic information and tobacco product use. They will view 5 videos, 1 at a time ,randomly assigned from the larger pool of videos. After viewing the videos, participants will rate each video on perceived message effectiveness (primary outcome) and respond to questions about vaping appeal and urge to vape (secondary outcomes). Finally, participants will respond to standard questions on psychological distress, tobacco product use in the home, and general health-related questions. After the survey, participants will view a debrief page with information about tobacco use harms. The survey will take 15-20 minutes.

For the follow-up study, a subset of participants will be asked to complete another survey around two weeks after they have been exposed to vaping prevention video ads in the first survey. In this survey, participants will view a total of six videos, including the five videos they watched when taking the Aim 2 survey around two weeks earlier, shown one at a time, along with one "decoy" video ad. The order of the videos will be randomized. After watching each video ad, participants will indicate whether they remember seeing the ad in the survey they took around two weeks prior. The follow-up survey will take 10-15 minutes.