Evaluation Shows Poor Results of ONDCP 'Above The Influence' Antidrug Media Campaign

"The extent of exposure to the ONDCP 'Above the Influence' campaign (RQ1) was assessed by cross-tabulating the measures of self-reported exposure to this campaign with each of the four treatment/control cells at the fourth wave of data collection, the point by which such exposure would have taken place for all study participants. Of youth in the control community/control school cell, 73% said they definitely had seen the ONDCP 'Above the Influence' campaign. The self-reported exposure to the ONDCP campaign was similar in the three treatment cells (68–79%).
"We can be confident that this exposure is in large measure due to actual exposure and not false recognition or youth providing what they may have believed to be a socially desirable response, as the percentage reporting they had definitely seen one of the two foils, or fake campaigns, was much less than the percentage reporting exposure to the ONDCP campaign. For example, in the control cell in which 73% of youth said they’d definitely seen the 'Above the Influence' campaign, 14.6% reported definitely seeing one foil and 20.2% claimed they definitely saw the other (false recognition of the two foils was highly correlated — 67% of those claiming recognition of the first foil also claimed recognition of the second). Similar differences were found in the other cells. These levels of false recognition are typical in response to survey questions about self-reported exposure that do not include actual images of an advertisement (see Shapiro (1994) for a discussion of false recognition of messages)."