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Got A Minute? Give It To Your Kid


  Contents
Star Bullet Home
Star Bullet Campaign Description
Star Bullet Contents of the Kit
Star Bullet Audience Profile
Star Bullet Campaign Development
Star Bullet Q&A Parenting as Prevention
Star Bullet
Appendices

Got A Minute? Give it to Your Kid.

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Campaign Development

How the Got a Minute? Campaign Was Developed

The Got a Minute? Campaign Took Many Millions of Minutes to Create

The roots of the campaign stretch back to 1997. Scientists from the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health had just spent 2 days at a conference in Utah hearing about the potential of a transdisciplinary approach to tobacco control—that is, one that would rely on many disparate disciplines, from child psychology to cultural studies to commercial marketing. The approach argued for broader thinking about youth tobacco use. A child’s decision to smoke is not made in isolation, but as part of many larger decisions and attitudes. It made sense, for example, that one of the biggest influences in any child’s life—a parent—should also affect his or her decision to smoke. Yet, most of the federal government’s efforts to curb youth tobacco use at the time focused directly on the young person and the health effects of tobacco, often through the media or regulation. A growing number of CDC officials began believing that other, less direct channels were not being tapped. Affecting parental behavior, they believed, could have a major impact on youth behavior around tobacco.

The evidence was already piling up in the tobacco control and substance abuse literature. Going back at least to the 1980s, researchers had been finding a range of parenting practices, most of them not directly tied to tobacco use, correlated with whether an adolescent decided to use tobacco. A CDC review of the literature identified 54 possible parenting interventions from more than 100 studies. Two of the most powerful studies [Resnick, et al. (1997) and Cohen, Richardson, and LaBree (1994)] tracked children over time to establish how parent-child “connectedness” is connected to an adolescent’s use of substances, including cigarettes and alcohol.

Bullseye diagram of Focus On Family Environment. Youth Behavior in the center with social, school, family, religion, media, tobacco, friends, and youth culture scattered around. In 1998, the CDC partnered with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to convene an expert panel on the subject. The 2 day meeting, which drew together experts from a broad range of scientific disciplines and program services, focused on how parents might prevent youth tobacco use and substance abuse as well as how they might communicate more effectively about these topics with their children. While worried about the potential of blaming parents for outcomes influenced by many factors outside the parent-child relationship, the panel agreed clear connections existed between parenting styles and youth outcomes. This raised a larger question: given that parents are “not categorical like the federal government,” as one participant put it, should the messages and program targeting parents be categorical, referring only to smoking, for example, or more comprehensive, applying to a wide range of behaviors? Not all participants thought that one approach—either categorical or comprehensive—should be the focus. Rather, many participants agreed there is a role for comprehensive education that is relevant to all substances as well as to specific messages about tobacco and other substances.

Many parenting practices were cited, but no consensus emerged on the perfect parenting model. To get an idea of what practices the experts regarded as most important, the CDC listed the major parenting practices culled from the literature and surveyed panel members on the relative impact of these practices on youth tobacco use (importance) and how easy its changeability might be. Twenty-seven respondents returned the survey and the results are outlined in the table below.

These results, along with a final report on the expert panel (included in this booklet as Appendix B), gave some early direction to the CDC as it began considering a specific campaign. The Academy for Educational Development (AED), a large Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit organization with an expertise in social marketing, was hired to help the CDC develop the campaign. After a review of the report, the literature, and the expert rankings gathered by the CDC, AED merged several of the highest-ranked practices (both for importance and changeability) into seven types of effective parenting interventions as follows:

  • Parent-child attachment,
  • Parent aware of child’s life (relationship),
  • Parent does activities with teen,
  • Parent maintains close contact (monitoring),
  • Parent conveys clear rules (generally and about smoking),
  • Parent consistent with consequences,
  • Parent teaches child to make rational decisions.
Parenting Factors1
  Importance Changeable Combined
  Mean n Mean n Mean
Relationship quality
1. Parent/child attachment 4.7 25 3.7 24 4.1
2. Parent aware of teen's life 4.6 25 4.0 25 4.3
3. Parent trusts teen without supervision 4.1 23 3.7 23 3.9
4. Parent does activities with teen 4.3 24 3.9 25 4.1
5. Parent available at key times 4.1 24 3.4 25 3.7
6. Child talks with parent re: important things 4.1 26 3.8 26 3.8
7. Parent praises teen 4.4 27 4.2 26 4.2

Monitoring
1. Parent knows where child/teen is at all times 4.0 26 3.8 25 3.9
2. Parent has routine for child/teen 3.9 26 3.9 26 4.0
3. Parent knows child's/teen's friends 4.1 27 3.7 27 4.0
4. Parent maintains close contact 3.8 26 4.0 26 4.0
5. Parent knows other parents 3.9 24 3.9 24 4.2
6. Child home alone for more than 2hrs 3.9 24 3.7 23 3.7

Rule, enforcement
1. Parent conveyed clear rules re: behavior 4.6 27 4.3 26 4.5
2. Child knows consequences 4.3 27 4.0 26 4.2
3. Parent conveyed clear rules re: homework 4.0 25 4.0 23 4.1
4. Parent conveyed clear rules re: smoking 4.4 27 4.2 26 4.4
5. Parent conveyed clear rules re: SLT2 4.3 26 4.2 25 4.4
6. Parent conveyed clear rules re: alcohol 4.4 25 4.2 25 4.5
7. Parent conveyed clear rules re: illicit drugs 4.5 26 4.2 25 4.5
8. Parent consistent with consequences 4.5 27 4.0 27 4.4

Key skills
1. Parent teaches child to manage conflict 4.5 23 3.6 22 4.0
2. Parent teaches child to make rational decisions 4.1 25 3.6 21 3.7
3. Parent teaches child to solve problems 4.3 25 3.5 21 4.0
4. Parent teaches child to resist difficult situations 4.2 24 3.6 21 3.8

Self efficacy
1. Parent is confident he/she can keep child safe 3.6 23 3.6 20 3.8
2. Parent is important in guiding child's actions 4.2 24 3.8 20 3.8

Role modeling
1. Parent has set a good example 4.6 26 3.7 26 4.1
2. Parent uses tobacco 4.5 27 3.0 27 3.9
3. Parent uses/abuses alcohol 4.5 25 2.8 25 3.7
4. Parent abuses illegal or prescription drugs 4.6 25 2.8 24 3.8

Harmful environment
1. Parent is verbally abusive to child/teen 4.8 26 3.0 23 4.0
2. Parent is physically or sexually abusive 4.9 25 2.8 21 3.9
3. Child witnesses parent verbally or physically abusing 4.9 24 2.9 21 4.1

1 A four-level scale was used for each question, ranging from 1.0 as Not Important and Not Changeable to 5.0 as Very Important and Very Changeable. The mean was calculated for each question and also for the combined mean of Importance and Changeable by adding the scores for both Importance and Changeable and then dividing it by two.

Thus the table presents the average mean scores for Importance and Changeable (how modifiable the behavior is perceived by the expert), and the average mean of Importance and Changeable combined for each question in terms of the parenting style and the likelihood of reducing (or increasing) cigarette smoking among children and adolescents in the future.

2 Smokeless tobacco

These seven types of interventions are all important. But no one marketing campaign, especially one with a modest budget, can take on all these behaviors. The CDC needed to determine which of these practices the agency could help or persuade parents to adopt. To determine which intervention was ripe for a campaign, AED and CDC considered which of the above interventions was most strongly supported in the literature, could be most easily communicated, showed the greatest potential for interesting parents, and would not overlap too much with other campaigns aimed at parents. The list was narrowed to four themes: awareness of child’s life, parent-child activities, parental monitoring, and conveying clear rules. Then, the CDC considered how these interventions might become part of a real campaign aimed at parents. Two clear possibilities arose:

  1. The campaign could persuade parents who were less involved with their children to become more involved (in other words, encourage more awareness of their children’s lives, more activities with their children, and better monitoring of where they are), or
  2. The campaign could attempt to spur parents who were not setting clear rules to set and enforce clear rules.
The budget would allow for only a single campaign targeted to a specific audience, so the CDC needed to decide: should the campaign’s focus be on less-involved parents or those unwilling or unable to set and enforce clear rules?

In addition, the CDC needed to determine when parents could most effectively reach their children. Should the CDC be talking to the parents of young teenagers, the subject of most of the studies in the literature, or would that be too late? Should parents be intervening before their child reaches this vulnerable period of growing independence and rebellion? Most children are offered their first cigarette around the age of 12. So, the CDC chose to focus on parents of children 9 to 12 years of age. Yet, that primary target would not be exclusive, the CDC decided, since the methods of dissemination would probably not be that narrow. Parents of older children would also be exposed, so efforts needed to be made to keep the message relevant and useful for them as well.

The formative research began by investigating what might help parents get more involved or set clear rules. A mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods was used. Six focus groups were conducted with parents to explore attitudes, benefits, and barriers around positive parenting practices. Participants, who had at least one child aged 7 to 11, were recruited and segmented as members of two groups—parents heavily involved with their child’s life (doers) and those less involved (non-doers). Given the qualitative nature of focus groups, it was understood that any findings could not be generalized to all parents, but a comparison of doers and non-doers did shed valuable light on what might matter to these parents, especially when seen alongside a separate quantitative analysis. Among the important findings was a clear desire of both groups of parents to connect better with their children, not because it would lead to better health outcomes but because “connectedness” was highly valued itself. By contrast, non-doer parents were not eager to set or enforce rules about tobacco or many other subjects.

In addition to the focus groups, 21 parenting questions from Healthstyles ’98, using a sample size of 500, were analyzed to find clusters of parenting styles. The challenge was to find which parents needed what kind of help. Researchers chose a three-cluster solution, which divided parents into three groups:

On-Target Parents

These parents are right on target with their parenting styles. They appear to be high in positive involvement and rule setting, and they ensure that these rules are obeyed. They are also confident that they can protect their children from behavioral and health risks.

Non-Enforcers

These may also be called the loving but lenient parents—they are very involved in their children’s lives and well-being, and they do communicate well enough with their children to articulate clear rules. They are lax in enforcing these rules, however, and their confidence that they can protect their children is low. These parents may be relying heavily on positive involvement and taking a nonconfrontational approach with their children.

Less-Involved

This category of parents showed the lowest levels of involvement and rule setting, though they are not quite as lax in rule enforcement as the nonenforcers. Not surprisingly, the less-involved parents are somewhat unconfident about their ability to protect their children from behavioral risks.

It was at the final category that the CDC wanted to aim its initial campaign. The focus groups had indicated this group might be ripe for a change: less-involved parents in the focus groups wanted to be more involved with their children or at least said so. They simply lacked self-efficacy. They knew instinctively they should be more connected with their children—they just didn’t know how.

Creating materials and messages that would help this group gain that self-efficacy became the focus of what would become the Got a Minute? campaign.

In the meantime, AED had also investigated what kind of campaign might be helpful to the CDC’s most important partners in tobacco—the state tobacco control programs. From the beginning, the CDC had viewed the state tobacco control programs, (recent beneficiaries of settlements with the tobacco industry), as the central players in dissemination. It would be these programs, primarily, that would need to reach the audience. What the CDC needed to know was what kind of materials the states might need.

AED used a national tobacco prevention conference to disseminate a written questionnaire about what kind of parenting campaign states might support. This survey was followed by lengthy interviews with nine states selected for their diversity in size, population, and funding situation. Data from 44 unduplicated states and the District of Columbia were gathered. The results showed states were using a variety of media to reach adults with two major messages: the dangers of environmental tobacco smoke and the value of quitting smoking. About half the states had campaigns aimed specifically at parents, but almost every state welcomed new materials aimed at parents from the CDC. A variety of potential materials drew positive responses from state tobacco control managers, including prototype ads, expert recommendations, and a training program. The managers also stressed the need for a guilt- and stress-free approach, as parents are already overwhelmed with “how-to” messages. Finally, the materials needed to be flexible, so that they could stand alone or fit neatly into existing programs.

In short, state tobacco control programs appeared eager to reach parents with a nonjudgmental message through a variety of channels—one reason the Got a Minute? kits contains a variety of materials, from a presentation to earned media recommendations to advertising.

With the states needs analyzed and a parenting behavior selected, the CDC went to work on creating a campaign that would resonate with the audience and be useful to the states. Both the HealthStyles ’98 data and the CDC’s early focus groups indicated low-involvement parents saw time and energy as the major barriers to becoming more involved with their children. So, the CDC worked with AED to create a campaign that would offer parents what they needed most: easy tactics for becoming involved.

Several concepts were tested with focus groups. Then, once the creative process produced actual magazine ads, a brochure, and radio spots, they were tested with parents in one-on-one intercept interviews and adjusted to add clarity. Some of the materials, including the introduction to this booklet, were also tested with a small group of state tobacco control managers.

Below is a diagram of how the creative materials in this packet are designed. Underlying all the products is an attempt to offer parents tactics for getting more involved with their children. Parents are supposed to be attracted to the campaign not because they think they may learn ways to help their children reject tobacco (parents in the focus groups were universally confident their children would never smoke). The appeal is the opportunity to become more connected, to, in the words of the advertising copy, “get into (their) kid’s head.” By offering simple ways to get more connected, praising a child, scheduling 10 minutes, etc., the campaign is aimed at improving a parent’s self-efficacy. With this new confidence and information, parents should be more likely to engage in the targeted behaviors—establishing an involved parenting style that is likely to act as a protective factor against tobacco use.

Flow diagram of the Intervention Model. Family less involved, leads to Barriers, Leads to Show Tactics: Model Behavior, Little Time Needed, leads to Lure Of CHanging Behavior: Better Communication with Child, leads to Attitude Changes: I can do these activities and I know how to reach my child, leads to New Behaviors: More activities and More Aware of Child's Life leads to More Activities, Better Communication, Altered Family Norm. Leads to Child's Need for Cigarette brands reduces.

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This page last reviewed November 20, 2003

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