And ironically,
more people who are educated listen than those who are less educated.
This is again, like I said, ironic because many times people
promoting the mass media as a way of providing health information,
say that you don't need to be educated, that's the benefit of using the radio.
But interestingly enough we found that people with more education were attracted
to the radio.
It could be an economic issue that they had better jobs and could afford it.
It could have been the type of programming that they were interested in and
understood it.
They were more involved in politics or
more used to seeking information from the outside.
We also found that again, men, as I mentioned,
we're more likely to listen than women.
And they also have different programming preferences.
Men would prefer the news.
Women, if they had the radio on, it was more as background noise.
Here again, is another irony,
the idea that much of health messaging is geared toward women,
oral rehydration, immunization, things to do to take care of their children.
But if they have the radio on they're not actually attending to it
as a information source but have it as a background companion noise.
Interestingly enough and one of the things that's said again about the benefit of
radio is that you can use batteries.
Well, we found that people who lived in sections of town that had
electricity were more likely to listen than those who didn't.
This again may be an economic issue because batteries, although they're cheap,
do wear out.
And if people are especially playing the radio to play music cassette tapes as well
as that, they'll run out quite quickly.
So here, again, we get back to this issue of cost and
factors influencing the behavior.
Then, finally, the types of messages that were recalled, people recalled more
messages about outbreaks, yellow fever, cholera, that type of thing.
And less about things from the clinic.
Less about health issues such as oral rehydration, immunization.
They got this kind of information more often from the clinic and
local community sources.
So while the radio has been said to be an important way of providing information,
it doesn't reach everyone.
And again, people don't get all the messages that are provided.
They don't attend to those.
This, from the innovation point of view,
is important in the sense that if you are trying to promote a new innovation,
trying to promote oral rehydration, tendons immunization.
And you think you can do this through certain communication channels,
you're not likely to reach all the people.
The radio in this case may be good for the early adopters.
But it may not be good for the late majority.
It may not be good for women or minority groups or
people living in poorer sections of town without electricity.
And finally, a fourth factor that would influence adoption are the characteristics
of the change agent.
The person who is promoting the new behavior or the innovation.
Here comes the concepts of homophily or heterophily, how similar or
different, how alike or how different is the change agent in terms of age,
gender, ethnic group, educational level, etc.,
from the people in the community who are expected to adopt the innovation.
One thing that's found is the more similar people are,
the more often they communicate, the more information they share among themselves,
the easier communication is, but At the same time, there is less new information.
People will share the same gossip, the same ideas, the same values.
If people are different, it's harder to communicate but
it's more likely that they will talk about different things, new things.
There's a challenge in public health that the change agent needs to be similar
enough to the people, to be able to communicate freely but different enough so
that he or she has some new ideas to introduce.
This means it's important for the health worker on coming to a new community
to attend ceremonies, to be visible in the market, to interact with people so
that he or she can become more similar more accepted by the community.
But at the same, because he or
she is different, be in a position to introduce some new ideas.
In fact research has shown that, when in terms of mental health,
when clients and therapists share a common language, or
ethnic origin, there is more interaction, clients come for more sessions.
There are also change agent characteristics such as
cultural competence, their ability to listen
that will influence how effective they are in promoting a new idea.
