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Full-Text Articles in Health Policy

How Narrative Focus And A Statistical Map Shape Health Policy Support Among State Legislators, Jeff Niederdeppe, Sungjong Roh, Caitlin Dreisbach Feb 2016

How Narrative Focus And A Statistical Map Shape Health Policy Support Among State Legislators, Jeff Niederdeppe, Sungjong Roh, Caitlin Dreisbach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study attempts to advance theorizing about health policy advocacy with combinations of narrative focus and a statistical map in an attempt to increase state legislators’ support for policies to address the issue of obesity by reducing food deserts. Specifically, we examine state legislators’ responses to variations in narrative focus (individual vs. community) about causes and solutions for food deserts in U.S. communities, and a statistical map (presence vs. absence) depicting the prevalence of food deserts across the United States. Using a Web-based randomized experiment (N = 496), we show that narrative focus and the statistical map interact to produce …


The Word Outside And The Pictures In Our Heads: Contingent Framing Effects Of Labels On Health Policy Preferences By Political Ideology, Sungjong Roh, Jeff Niederdeppe Jan 2016

The Word Outside And The Pictures In Our Heads: Contingent Framing Effects Of Labels On Health Policy Preferences By Political Ideology, Sungjong Roh, Jeff Niederdeppe

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study uses data from systematic Web image search results and two randomized survey experiments to analyze how frames commonly used in public debates about health issues, oper- ationalized here as alternative word choices, influence public support for health policy reforms. In Study 1, analyses of Bing (N = 1,719), Google (N = 1,872), and Yahoo Images (N = 1,657) search results suggest that the images returned from the search query “sugar-sweetened beverage” are more likely to evoke health-related concepts than images returned from a search query about “soda.” In contrast, “soda” search queries were more likely to incorporate brand-related …


How Motivated Reasoning And Temporal Frames May Polarize Opinions About Wildlife Disease Risk, Sungjong Roh, Katherine A. Mccomas, Laura N. Rickard, Daniel J. Decker Mar 2015

How Motivated Reasoning And Temporal Frames May Polarize Opinions About Wildlife Disease Risk, Sungjong Roh, Katherine A. Mccomas, Laura N. Rickard, Daniel J. Decker

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We draw from theories of motivated reasoning, dual-processing models, and attribution of responsibility to examine how scientific messages may increase public polarization with respect to emerging risk issues such as Lyme disease. A nationally representative sample of Americans (N = 460) read messages about Lyme disease that varied the framing of responsibility for the prevalence of the disease (human/wildlife vs. wildlife only) and when its effects will occur (today vs. in the next 10 years). The influence of framing was contingent on participants’ partisanship, which resulted in a boomerang effect among Republicans and increased the degree of political polarization regarding …


Acknowledging Individual Responsibility While Emphasizing Social Determinants In Narratives To Promote Obesity-Reducing Public Policy: A Randomized Experiment, Jeff Niederdeppe, Sungjong Roh, Michael A. Shapiro Feb 2015

Acknowledging Individual Responsibility While Emphasizing Social Determinants In Narratives To Promote Obesity-Reducing Public Policy: A Randomized Experiment, Jeff Niederdeppe, Sungjong Roh, Michael A. Shapiro

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study tests whether policy narratives designed to increase support for obesity-reducing public policies should explicitly acknowledge individual responsibility while emphasizing social, physical, and economic (social) determinants of obesity. We use a web-based, randomized experiment with a nationally representative sample of American adults (n = 718) to test hypotheses derived from theory and research on narrative persuasion. Respondents exposed to narratives that acknowledged individual responsibility while emphasizing obesity’s social determinants were less likely to engage in counterargument and felt more empathy for the story’s main character than those exposed to a message that did not acknowledge individual responsibility. Counterarguing and …