A study of public access television as a means to increase the health awareness of adults

The purpose of this study was twofold. Primarily, the study was conducted to establish the extent to which the local public access television programs produced by the Wayne County Health Department, Richmond, Indiana had been an effective source of health information in helping raise health awareness for adult residents who have access to cable television. The secondary purpose of the study was to gather information for the department's future television programming. Five face-to-face interview participants and twenty-five telephone survey participants responded to seventeen questions. The questions concerned health information acquired by watching public access television programs, participants' preferences for certain health topics and formats for the television presentations, and whether they had taken any specific actions that were a result of the health related information gained through watching the public access television programs. In addition, the participants were asked about their respective demographic characteristics.The study produced two major findings regarding the adult participants' opinions or whether they obtained health information through public access television and how their demographic characteristics correlated to previous research done regarding viewing habits and the utilization of television as a source of health information.1. The majority of the Wayne County adults interviewed both in person and by telephone reported at least one piece of health information acquired by watching public access television health programs.2. The demographic findings were mixed as it pertained to some of the major research related to this study.The results of this study indicated that adult or public health educators may, where appropriate, consider the use of public access television as a method to help raise health awareness with adults. It is suggested that additional research should be done on this particular topic because of the dearth of previous research done on this specific topic.Department of Educational LeadershipThesis (D. Ed.