418 – Contributed Oral Poster Presentations: Section on Health Policy Statistics
Statistical Issues in the Use of Aggregate Market Research Data in Health Communication Planning
William Pollard
Atlanta, GA
Communication to affect behavior is an important public health tool, and understanding an at-risk target audience is essential for developing effective communication. One source of communication-relevant data is from market research surveys with information on media habits, lifestyle, and product use. In some widely-used commercial market research data bases, census and postal areas are the units of analysis. Areas are classified in such a way as to differentiate consumer behavior, and market research survey data are summarized for the different area types. However associations between risk factors and communication variables observed at the aggregate level within areas may differ from the associations between these variables within individuals, and caution is required in interpreting the data.