Testing the Effect of Press Guides on Health Journalists

White River Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Medical Reporting

Treatments: Other: Press Guide

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other U.S. Federal agency; NIH

Identifiers

NCT00938938

16782

NCI R01CA104721

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to test the effect of adding a "press guide" to standard materials that journalists routinely receive regarding research published in medical journals.

Full description

The news media has a powerful influence on public perceptions about health and health care; and much of what people -- including many physicians -- know and believe about medicine comes from the print and broadcast media. Several studies, however, have raised questions about how well the press covers medical issues, pointing out errors and omissions in coverage and misleading presentations of statistics. The goal is to help train journalists to better understand and cover medical research, and to help improve communication between journalists and medical journals.

Journalists traditionally write newspaper articles about medical research using information from press releases and the medical journal article's abstract or full text. The objective is to test whether the addition of a 'press guide' (a one-page summary of the study findings) in addition to these other materials improves comprehension of facts about the study article and the overall judgment of the newsworthiness of the study.

Enrollment: 50 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• All journalists attending the 2009 NIH/Dartmouth/VA Medicine in the Media Symposium will be invited to participate in the study.
• The symposium, which is held annually, is open to journalists across the country and from abroad.

Participants who are Health Journalists at the Health Journalism 2010 conference will be invited to participate in the study. This annual conference is being held in Chicago, IL at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place During April 22, 2010-April 25, 2010.

Trial design

50 participants in 2 patient groups

Press guide plus press release

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in the intervention group will receive a press guide (a one-page summary of study findings written by the investigators) in addition to the journal's full narrative press release for the selected article, a copy of the article's abstract, and a link to the full text of the journal article.

Treatment:

Other: Press Guide

Press release only

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in the control group will receive the journal's full narrative press release for the selected article, a copy of the article's abstract, and a link to the full text of the journal article.