Background
& Statistics
The three of us
were sitting in a coffee shop in Leamington Spa when a heated discussion was
sparked by the topic of ignorance surrounding sexual health in our native
countries of Cyprus, India and Pakistan . What we found particularly compelling
were the stories each of us shared. The first, rather shocking story involved a
21-year-old boy in Pakistan who had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and could
not understand why. It later transpired that he was chewing
condoms instead of wearing them. Another story involved an 18-year-old
Cypriot girl who was convinced she could not receive
sexually transmitted diseases from anal sex. The last story involved a 17-year-old
boy in India who thought you could “only get STDs from
whores”.
However, it appears this is
not a phenomenon endemic to Cyprus, India or Pakistan. To highlight the gravity of the situation, a
recent survey of American high school students revealed only 39% were taught
how to use condoms in their health classes and only 60% admitted to having used
them (Statistic Brian, 2016). These numbers call for some urgency since the youth
are disproportionately affected by STDs, with people under 25 experiencing the
highest rates of STDs in the UK (FPA,2011) and 15-24 year olds accounting for
the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea in the US (CDC, 2015).
The consequences
of unsafe sexual practices can be severe, for example, the trauma caused by abortions due to unexpected teenage pregnancies or
the contraction of an STI such as chlamydia and gonorrhea. These two STIs are
frequently undiagnosed and can have devastating consequences on both men and
women. For example, the bacteria can
cause pelvic inflammatory disease in women which can lead to the scarring of
fallopian and infertility (Cates, Rolfs & Aral, 1990) whereas for men,
Chlamydia can lead to an inflammation of the testicles and possible sterility (Berger et al., 1978; Westrom, 1998)
Our Idea
The idea for our
project emerged when we noticed two things: (a) the common denominator in all
our stories was the youth and (b) we were most
shocked by the story of the young Pakistani boy. As three people within the
same age bracket we wondered what factor caused him to have such a different
idea about sexual health than we did. How do we know condoms are not meant to
be chewed on to be effective while he didn’t? The answer is: education. Therefore, we
created a simple, educational poster to target the youth and persuade them to indulge in safe sex,
particularly, using condoms.
Description
The poster depicts
a short story of a penis and a vagina that embark on two separate journeys
around the world. The penis starts off in New York and then is seen in Paris,
whereas, the vagina starts off in India and heads off to Egypt. In the final
picture they have been shown to be on a date. Both their sexual intentions have
been made clear with the condom on the penis’ head and the vagina’s speech
bubble that says ‘second best meatballs I’ll be having tonight’.
Persuasive Techniques
We believe our
poster has the potential to be effective in three ways:
(1) It uses
narrative information
Studies that have
compared the persuasiveness of statistical versus narrative evidence have found
that narrative evidence is more persuasive in the case of health communication,
for example, a study by Hinyard and Kreuter (2007). For this reason, we decided
to use a pictorial narrative of a story of a penis and vagina traveller who
meet.
(2) It is funny
(Well we think so anyway)
Humour is an
emotion that is often employed to persuade people. It has been shown to be
effective when audiences are processing messages heuristically (Bless &
Schwartz, 1999). It can also grab your attention and make the message more
memorable. Additionally, they have an added impact on key points that need to
be highlighted. Therefore, in the poster, we wanted to highlight our tagline
‘Use protection. You don’t know where they’ve been’ and the condom on the
penis’ head using humour and hence, increasing the chances of persuasion.
(3) It is
memorable
For our cause,
memory is important because the act of using a condom will appear at a later
time than when an individual sees the poster. Therefore, we wanted to make it
as memorable as possible. Rhoads (1994) found that messages that used vivid
details to stress their main point without the use of unnecessary details was
rated more positive than those that did not adopt this technique. That is why
we employed bright backgrounds and eye-catching characters to emphasise the
meaning behind our poster.
Conclusion
The main goal of
our project was to influence the youth to use condoms during sex since the
ignorance surrounding sexual health and the statistics are concerning. Using the persuasive techniques outlined above, we hope to
raise awareness in this area and impact the decisions and hence, the behaviour
of our target audience. We accept that not everyone will be running to a
pharmacy to buy a packet of Durex, but we think it will definitely push the
majority to take charge of their own sexual well-being and most importantly,
motivate them into making sexual health a central and shame-free part of their
circles’ dialogue.
References
Berger, R. E., Alexander, E. R., Monda, G. D.,
Ansell, J., McCormick, G., & Holmes, K. K. (1978). Chlamydia trachomatis as
a cause of acute idiopathic epididymitis. New England Journal of Medicine, 298, 301-304.
Bless, H., & Schwartz, N. (1999).
Sufficient and necessary conditions in dual-process models. U: S. Chaiken, Y.
Thorpe (ur.). Dual-process
theories in social psychology.
Cates, W., Rolfs, R. T., & Aral, S. O.
(1990). Sexually transmitted diseases, pelvic inflammatory disease, and
infertility: an epidemiologic update. Epidemiologic
Reviews, 12, 199-220.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(2015). Sexually Transmitted Disease
Surveillance 2015. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats15/std-surveillance-2015-print.pdf
Eruptingmind. (2011). How Mood Affects Persuasion. Retrieved January 7, 2011, from http://www.eruptingmind.com/how-mood-effects-persuaion/
FPA. (2011). Teenagers: Sexual Health and Behaviour. Retrieved from http://www.fpa.org.uk/sites/default/files/teenagers-sexual-health-and-behaviour-factsheet-january-2011.pdf
Hinyard, L. J., & Kreuter, M. W. (2007).
Using narrative communication as a tool for health behavior change: a
conceptual, theoretical, and empirical overview. Health Education & Behavior, 34, 777-792.
Rhoads, K. (1994). The impact of figural vividness on persuasion. Unpublished master’s thesis, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Rhoads, K. (1994). The impact of figural vividness on persuasion. Unpublished master’s thesis, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Statistic Brain. (2016, May 9). Condom Use Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.statisticbrain.com/condom-use-statistics/
Westrom, L. V. (1996). Chlamydia and its effect
on reproduction. Journal of the
British Fertility Society, 1, 23-30.
Authors:
Ayse Lisa Allsion, Diva Chokshi, Alina Abid Zuberi
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.