Article review date
August 2024
Article publication date
July 2024
ARPANSA summary
This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of public health messaging in relation to sun protection when using appearance-based or health-based messages. The study recruited 95 participants (aged 17-24 years) who first completed a questionnaire on their sun protection behaviour and knowledge. The participants were then shown one of six possible text messages and their sun protection intentions were evaluated. Each of the six text messages tried a different strategy to appeal to the study participants. The messages either contained information on melanoma health risk, methods of sun protection, the cosmetic consequences of surgical melanoma removal or a combination thereof. The results showed that none of the messages affected the sun protection intentions of the participants compared to a control message indicating no significant difference between any of the interventions. Outside of the intervention evaluations, the survey found a gender-gap in sunbathing behaviour where 26% of male participants sunbathed compared to 60% of female participants.
Link to study
Published in
Australian Psychologist
ARPANSA commentary
Ongoing sun protection campaigns in Australia like SunSmart continue to seek to improve the efficacy of their messaging, ultimately with the goal of reducing adverse health outcomes related to sun overexposure. Recent studies (Persson, S. et al., 2018; Mahler, H. 2015; Cheng, J. et al. 2018) have indicated that appealing to concerns about appearance may be more effective than appealing to concerns about health risk and this direction has been partially adopted by some newer sun protection campaigns.
The present study did not add significantly to this discussion as neither the health-based nor appearance-based messages had an effect compared to the control. The use of a single intra-survey text message to deliver the intervention and the absence of follow-up behaviour evaluations were highlighted as major limitations that contributed to the ineffectiveness shown. The authors also identified several other limitations with their study including low statistical power for the number of conditions that were tested and a gender imbalance among the study participants. It should also be noted that the appearance-based messaging in the study focused on surgical scarring from melanoma excisions, whereas other studies have focused primarily on skin photo-aging. This difference, although subtle, is significant as photo-aging is a much more deterministic outcome compared to melanoma and related treatments.
Whenever the UV-index is over three, ARPANSA recommends protecting yourself from the sun by following the five sun protection principles. More information about the risks of sun exposure and methods of sun protection can be found from: The World Health Organization, The Cancer Council of Australia and SunSmart websites.
