The long live kids campaign: Awareness of campaign messages

Abstract

Media interventions are one strategy used to promote physical activity, but little is known about their effectiveness with children. As part of a larger evaluation, the purpose of this study was to assess the short-term effect of a private industry sponsored media literacy campaign, Long Live Kids, aimed at children in Canada. Specifically, we investigated children's awareness of the campaign and its correlates. Using a cohort design, a national sample (N=331, male=171; mean age=10.81, SD=0.99) completed a telephone survey two weeks prior to the campaign release, and again 1 year later. Only 3% of the children were able to recall the Long Live Kids campaign unprompted and 57% had prompted recall. Logistic regression found family income (Wald x2=11.06, p <3 days/week), whereas children living in high-income households ($60,000/yr) were between 3.5 to 5 times more likely to have campaign recall compared with children living in a low-income households ($20,000/yr). These findings suggest that media campaigns developed by industry may have a role in promoting physical activity to children although our findings identified a knowledge gap between children living in high- and low-income households. Future research needs to examine how children become aware of such media campaigns and how this mediated information is being used by children. © Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.