{"id":31798,"date":"2011-04-06T08:07:25","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T12:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=31798"},"modified":"2011-08-05T11:14:09","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T15:14:09","slug":"the-art-and-science-of-persuasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/04\/the-art-and-science-of-persuasion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art and Science of Persuasion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Just<\/a>
A poster for Just One, an anti-smoking campaign, highlighting information provided by the American Cancer Society.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the past 20 years, students in Professor Leslie Snyder\u2019s service learning class in communication sciences have been helping national and Connecticut nonprofit and governmental organizations communicate with the public to improve public health.<\/p>\n

The more than 30 outside organizations that have taken part in the program benefit from the students\u2019 hard work, free research and creative ideas. The students, in turn, gain valuable work experience and the satisfaction of knowing their efforts have gone toward a good cause.<\/p>\n

During a recent session of the semester-long class, Communication Campaigns and Applied Research, <\/strong>Snyder separated her students into four small groups that worked on campaigns for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Legacy Foundation<\/a>, and the Connecticut Children\u2019s Medical Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the ground rules is that they must need our services,\u201d says Snyder, a nationally known expert who has supervised student campaigns for the National Institute for Drug Abuse, March of Dimes, Connecticut Secretary of State, Connecticut Department of Public Health, and Windham Hospital, among others. \u201cI\u2019ve set it up so that students are working for real organizations that are planning or thinking about doing a campaign for a particular target group.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<p>Warning,<\/a>
Another poster in the Just One anti-smoking campaign.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The organizations asked the students to design campaigns to educate people about the potential dangers of casual and social smoking; head injuries in collegiate and high school intramural sports; pre-diabetes screenings; and impairments in mature (age 60+) drivers.<\/p>\n

Simply raising awareness isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the points in this area is you don\u2019t go for awareness, that\u2019s too modest a goal,\u201d says Snyder, a professor of communication sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and director of the University\u2019s award-winning Center for Health Communication and Marketing<\/a>. \u201cYou try to think of a behavior that you want people to do as a result of your message. So for a blood donation campaign for example, what you want is for people to donate not just to educate them about the need for blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clients appreciate the assistance the class provides with independent research and focus groups. The students benefit as well, gathering invaluable work experience and training that stands out on a resume once they\u2019ve secured their degree.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Ahead<\/a>
A poster designed to help prevent head injuries in collegiate and high school sports.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dan Zbin, an eighth-semester communication sciences major in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, says the class was a lot of hard work, but definitely worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis class helped me out tremendously in preparation for my future career and job opportunities in marketing,\u201d says Zbin, a senior majoring in communication sciences. \u201cFrom this course, I have developed leadership, teamwork, time management, networking, and interpersonal skills. I have been told by interviewers that this aspect of my college career is an invaluable experience and it has taken me to the next round of interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the semester, the students participate in conference calls with representatives of each organization to learn what they want and how best to meet their needs. At the end of the semester, they report back to the clients with research results, focus group feedback, and a clearly defined persuasion strategy to change people\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve designed this course so that the students have to draw on what they learned in their other classes,\u201d says Snyder, who also serves as a principal investigator for UConn\u2019s Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention<\/a>. \u201cI see this as a capstone project that pulls together things they have learned in theory, applied communication and methods classes, and uses those skills for the benefit of a client. The students seem to really like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<p>Elder<\/a>
A road safety flier for the Adult Injury Prevention program at Connecticut Children's Medical Center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Diego Lopez-Vega, a senior with a double major in communication sciences and Latin American Studies, says the class gave him a greater appreciation for the work involved in creating a communication campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took the class because I wanted to learn about communication campaigns but I never imagined I would be designing my own,\u201d says Lopez-Vega, whose group created a casual smoking campaign called \u2018Just One,\u2019 emphasizing the negative health effects even one cigarette can have on the human body.<\/p>\n

Students Morgan Romano, Matthew Jakobsons, and Jamie Lamborn also worked on the Just One campaign, which they later presented to officials with the American Legacy Foundation<\/a>. The Foundation, which oversees the \u2018National truth\u2019 anti-smoking campaign, was created in 1999 following the Master Settlement Agreement between 46 state governments and the tobacco industry.<\/p>\n

Working under their professor\u2019s close supervision, the students are trained in proper research techniques and the intricacies of forming and managing focus groups. Learning about focus groups in a classroom is one thing, Snyder says. Actually recruiting a focus group and leading one for research purposes is something else.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to make sure the students have done the training so they know how to act professionally, which some of them haven\u2019t been asked to do before \u2013 ever,\u201d says Snyder. \u201cThis is real research. They are learning skills they don\u2019t get elsewhere in terms of focus group training and pre-testing materials training. I tell the students, \u2018This goes on your r\u00e9sum\u00e9.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<p>Elder<\/a>
An elder driver road safety flier.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Romano, a senior majoring in communication sciences and business, says the class helped her prepare for enrollment in an experiential learning program as a research analyst for the business school. Despite working mostly with seasoned graduate students in her analyst role, Romano learned she\u2019s the only one with the necessary focus group experience and survey skills the program demands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe practiced focus groups in [Prof. Snyder\u2019s] class, which was really fun and interesting,\u201d she says. \u201cSometimes the people pretending to be participants would have cards that told them to \u2018be shy\u2019 or \u2018interrupt everyone,\u2019 which gave the moderator a lot of things to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Adult Injury Prevention<\/a> program at the Connecticut Children\u2019s Medical Center used the fliers and brochures UConn students created to encourage mature drivers to take a one-hour confidential assessment exam.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a wonderful experience on our end,\u201d says Garry Lapidus, director of the medical center\u2019s Injury Prevention Center and an associate professor of pediatrics and public health at the UConn School of Medicine. \u201cThe students were terrific. They brought new energy to our efforts. In particular, they were able to conceive and develop new messages that we were able to use on one of our projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snyder says officials at the CDC are considering using some of the students\u2019 focus group results and research findings to develop future campaigns regarding head injuries and diabetes screening.<\/p>\n

For UConn senior Shannon Jacobson, the long hours and large workload were worth it in the end. She was part of the group that worked on the elderly driver safety campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing my hard work actually being implemented has been very gratifying,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen we were first given our project, it was very intimidating. Being an undergrad, each of us did not have much exposure to really working in a professional environment like that. So when our project was accepted by our client, we really liked it. It gave me more confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Communication course teaches students to create education campaigns that will change behavior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[44],"class_list":["post-31798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gallery","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-22 06:48:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31798"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43330,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31798\/revisions\/43330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31798"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=31798"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=31798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}