This study examines how adolescent viewers respond to portrayals of alcohol use in television advertisements, with particular attention to effects of a sports context. The dependent measures are the viewers' positive and negative cognitive responses regarding alcohol use and regarding the advertisements themselves. The study is divided into three phases. The first phase is an extensive measure development and experimental stimuli and procedure pretesting effort. The second phase will be a test of the effects of imbedding beer advertisements in sports programming and featuring sports celebrities or other sports content in the beer advertisements on a homogeneous sample of male youths from 7th to 12th grade. Messages will be sampled randomly, and treated as random effects, permitting generalization across the defined population of network, prime-time television. The third phase will replicate the experiment with female and Hispanic subjects. A variety of covariates including self-monitoring, sensation-seeking, and exposure to alcohol education programs are also included. Findings from this study would better inform the debate about the propriety of alcohol advertising, especially during sports programming, might provide insights useful in designing alcohol education programs that equip viewers to better resist persuasive appeals, and should provide a better base for understanding how and under what circumstances advertisements influence adolescents' subsequent attitudes and behaviors regarding alcohol use.
