Abstract
Persuasive message designers would like to be able to pretest messages to see which will be more effective in influencing behavioral outcomes, but pretesting using behavioral measures is commonly not practical. Examination of within-study effect size comparisons from 317 studies of 22 message variations suggests that persuasive messages’ relative effectiveness is strikingly similar across attitudinal, intention, and behavioral outcomes—with messages’ relative persuasiveness with respect to intention outcomes especially indicative of relative persuasiveness with respect to behavioral outcomes. Intention measures thus provide a convenient and accurate means of persuasive message pretesting.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 623-645 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Journal of Communication |
Volume | 71 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 1 2021 |
Keywords
- Formative research
- Message pretesting
- Persuasion
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language