Health Campaign and Message Strategy- Effect of Discriminate Messages on Healthy Behaviors

Over the past several decades overweight and obesity levels haveincreased throughout the United States and the greatest increases amongobese people occurred in persons with some college education between theages of 18 and 29 years. This study examines the utility of theory-basedmessages designed to increase college students' intention to eat healthy foodand engage in substantive physical activity.In the present study three research objectives are presented. The firstobjective is to report the relative contributions of variables in an extendedtheory of planned behavior model (TPB plus habit symbolic modeling anddirect modeling) predicting behavioral intentions to eat healthy food andperform physical activity in direct or indirect ways. A second objective is togive a detailed analysis of underlying cognitive structures corresponding tospecific beliefs which discriminate most between high-intenders and lowintenders.The final objective is to report the effects of discriminatedmessages in changing behavioral intentions to eat a healthy diet and toperform physical activity following a classroom intervention.Overall the current study contributes to the literature because it usesa theory-driven approach to develop discriminate messages that can be usedto influence college students' intentions to eat healthy food and toparticipate in physical activity.