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Targeted advertisement of chlamydia screening on social media: a mixed-methods analysis

Targeted advertisement of chlamydia screening on social media: a mixed-methods analysis
Targeted advertisement of chlamydia screening on social media: a mixed-methods analysis
Objective: Chlamydia is one of the most common sexually transmitted infection in teenagers and young adults. This study used a mixed-methods analysis to investigate targeted promotion of chlamydia home-testing on social media.

Methods: Our first study, in which face-to-face interviews with young women were conducted, sought to explore their attitudes and preferences towards social media-based health promotion. Our second study used Facebook and Google analytics to examine visits to a chlamydia testing page (where chlamydia testing kits could be ordered online) both before and after a targeted Facebook-based health promotion campaign was conducted.

Results: The interviews revealed Facebook to be the preferred choice of social media, with participants perceiving it to be a powerful and far-reaching platform for social interaction. Participants also highlighted several aspects of promotional content to be important at increasing engagement with the target population including appropriate use of colour, level of interactivity, use of humour, and anonymity. The website analysis showed a 277% increase in the direct entrance on the chlamydia testing kit page and 41% increase in chlamydia test kit orders in comparison to the baseline period prior to the intervention.
Conclusions: The findings support social media as an engaging medium for online promotion of chlamydia self-testing and implicate Facebook advertising as a useful tool in addition to community-based chlamydia screening services. Future research needs to identify if targeted social media-based health promotion could lead to higher chlamydia diagnosis rate in comparison to traditional communication channels.
2055-2076
1-10
Nadarzynski, Tomasz
218d69a1-d1be-46f4-bead-23071bd4f270
Burton, Jack
e0994186-e6b6-4202-8d51-5838aa3a04bc
Henderson, Kim
c6eebbd8-55ed-4ebb-8fcd-12de3fe7be06
Zimmerman, Deborah
2be20bf0-7683-4a79-bb4f-9fe300ce1e2a
Hill, Orla
b0bb26d3-9893-4066-821c-737b4fde9fb9
Graham, Cynthia
ac400331-f231-4449-a69b-ec9a477224c8
Nadarzynski, Tomasz
218d69a1-d1be-46f4-bead-23071bd4f270
Burton, Jack
e0994186-e6b6-4202-8d51-5838aa3a04bc
Henderson, Kim
c6eebbd8-55ed-4ebb-8fcd-12de3fe7be06
Zimmerman, Deborah
2be20bf0-7683-4a79-bb4f-9fe300ce1e2a
Hill, Orla
b0bb26d3-9893-4066-821c-737b4fde9fb9
Graham, Cynthia
ac400331-f231-4449-a69b-ec9a477224c8

Nadarzynski, Tomasz, Burton, Jack, Henderson, Kim, Zimmerman, Deborah, Hill, Orla and Graham, Cynthia (2019) Targeted advertisement of chlamydia screening on social media: a mixed-methods analysis. Digital Health, 5, 1-10. (doi:10.1177/2055207619827193).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Objective: Chlamydia is one of the most common sexually transmitted infection in teenagers and young adults. This study used a mixed-methods analysis to investigate targeted promotion of chlamydia home-testing on social media.

Methods: Our first study, in which face-to-face interviews with young women were conducted, sought to explore their attitudes and preferences towards social media-based health promotion. Our second study used Facebook and Google analytics to examine visits to a chlamydia testing page (where chlamydia testing kits could be ordered online) both before and after a targeted Facebook-based health promotion campaign was conducted.

Results: The interviews revealed Facebook to be the preferred choice of social media, with participants perceiving it to be a powerful and far-reaching platform for social interaction. Participants also highlighted several aspects of promotional content to be important at increasing engagement with the target population including appropriate use of colour, level of interactivity, use of humour, and anonymity. The website analysis showed a 277% increase in the direct entrance on the chlamydia testing kit page and 41% increase in chlamydia test kit orders in comparison to the baseline period prior to the intervention.
Conclusions: The findings support social media as an engaging medium for online promotion of chlamydia self-testing and implicate Facebook advertising as a useful tool in addition to community-based chlamydia screening services. Future research needs to identify if targeted social media-based health promotion could lead to higher chlamydia diagnosis rate in comparison to traditional communication channels.

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In preparation date: 2018
Submitted date: 2018
Accepted/In Press date: 7 January 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 1 February 2019

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 427705
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/427705
ISSN: 2055-2076
PURE UUID: df6a1351-a7f4-449d-91ed-b18b26a3f5f7
ORCID for Cynthia Graham: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7884-599X

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Date deposited: 25 Jan 2019 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:09

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Contributors

Author: Tomasz Nadarzynski
Author: Jack Burton
Author: Kim Henderson
Author: Deborah Zimmerman
Author: Orla Hill
Author: Cynthia Graham ORCID iD

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