Is it how we tell them about alcohol? The role of presentation formats in health education materials for lower educated students

In the Netherlands adolescents from lower secondary education levels are more likely to engage in alcohol abuse than adolescents from higher education levels. Low educated adolescents also begin to do so at an earlier age. This suggests that low educated students are more in need of prevention interventions than students from higher levels. The Dutch government perceives health education materials to be an important component of an overall prevention approach. In the Dutch context these materials have been developed for the general population of secondary education students. However, low educated students generally possess less cognitive capacities than students from higher education levels, which is likely to influence the effectiveness of health education materials negatively. One factor that is suggested to influence information processing is the format in which information is presented. Three often studied formats that may impact on the effectiveness of health education materials for low educated students are the informational, narrative, and statistical formats. The existing literature proposes various likely mechanisms of action for these formats that explain how these could increase the effectiveness of health education materials. However, their influence on the effects of health education materials have never been examined amongst low educated adolescents. Instead, most previous studies have focused on college students, who can be expected to have significantly more cognitive capacities. The aim of this dissertation is therefore to examine how presentation formats can be used to make health education materials for low educated students as effective as possible.