Source: CORNELL UNIVERSITY submitted to
PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF FOODBORNE ILLNESS TO INCREASE MEXICAN-AMERICAN PERCEPTIONS OF FOODBORNE ILLNESS AND TO INCREASE COMPLIANCE WITH SAFE HOME FOOD PREPARATION PRACTICES
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
TERMINATED
Funding Source
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1003981
Grant No.
(N/A)
Project No.
NYC-131416
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Oct 1, 2014
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2018
Grant Year
(N/A)
Project Director
Shapiro, MI, A..
Recipient Organization
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
ITHACA,NY 14853
Performing Department
Communication
Non Technical Summary
New York State has more than a half-million (462,000) residents of Mexican origin. There are a number of indications that Mexican Americans may have a higher incidence of foodborne illness than other groups, that outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with Mexican ethnic foods may be increasing, and that Mexican foods tend to contain more high risk ingredients. Home contamination is estimated to be responsible for about 20% of foodborne illnesses. An important reason home cooks in this community do not follow safe practices is they believe their personal risk is low and seldom see the consequences of foodborne illness. One strategy for increasing the perception of risk found effective in other domains but not tested for food safety or Mexican-Americans is to use first-person narrative messages from victims of food-borne illness or from affected family members. The current project will explore how to shape these first-person stories in this community to create effective messages without creating resistance and to report the results to the outreach, extension and scientific community.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
40%
Applied
40%
Developmental
20%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
72372993030100%
Goals / Objectives
Overall goal:The proposed research is aimed at improving health and reducing foodborne illness in the Mexican-American community by creating effective messages aimed at Mexican-Americans who cook regularly for their families. In specific we propose to investigate the use of first-person narrative messages based on the experiences of Mexican-American victims of food-borne illness and their affected family members as a messaging strategy to increase the perception of risk, to encourage safe home food preparation practices in the Mexican American community, and to reduce the incidence of food-borne illness in that community. The use of first-person narrative messages has been found effective in other domains, but has not been tested for food safety or in the Mexican-American community. More information is needed about how to shape these first-person stories in this community to create effective messages without creating resistance. To accomplish this we will.Identify and get permission from about 20 Mexican-American victims of foodborne illness, who will be asked to tell their stories as part of a videotaped interview.Conduct focus group and other testing with Mexican-American home cooks to identify those stories that are 1. Most likely to increase perceptions of the risk of foodborne illness from home food preparation 2. Most likely to connect with the target audience of Mexican Americans who commonly prepare food at home for themselves and others.Select four to six stories that seem most effective and prepare messages for experiments.Conduct experiments with Mexican-American home cooks as participants in which first-person narrative messages will be compared to existing home food safety messages to determine if the narrative messages are more effective in increasing perceptions of risk and increasing intent to follow safe home food practices. Other measures including measures of identification with the character in the story, liking and empathy will be measured to help determine what aspects of a story are most likely to be effective.Report results at conferences, and in journalsConduct a Webinar to reach researchers, Extension personnel, and others involved in campaigns to reduce foodborne illness resulting from home food preparation.
Project Methods
This project will proceed in three stages 1. Identify victims and gather their stories. 2. Conduct focus groups and experiments to test the messages for effectiveness. 3. Report findings to the scholarly community, the extension community and to others involved in home foods safety with the Mexican-American community.Identify victims and gather their stories.Using a contacts the investigators have established in the Mexican-American community, with a migrant health program, with Extension agents working with that community, among groups advocating for victims of foodborne illness, and with a lawyer representing victims of victims of foodborne illness, the investigators will identify and get permission from about 20 Mexican-American victims of foodborne illness, who will be asked to tell their stories as part of a videotaped interview. Victims will be encouraged to tell their stories in the language most comfortable to them, English or Spanish. The team--which includes food safety experts, communication campaign experts, and the abovementioned contacts with the Mexican-American community and advocates for victims of foodborne illness--will continue to consult on this project using phone conferences and in-person meetings where practical.Focus group testing to identify promising stories,Focus groups have been used extensively in food safety research (Shapiro, Porticella, Jiang, & Gravani, 2011; Tiozzo et al.,2011), and standard procedures have been established (Morgan, 1997). A focus group interview protocol will be developed by the team, including experts in home food safety, nutrition and communication. The interviews will be focused on evoking responses to the videotaped messages. Subtitles will be added to the videotaped interviews in the language not used by the speaker. (e.g. English subtitles for Spanish speakers). Mexican-Americans who cook regularly in the home for at least two other people in the household will be recruited for the focus groups. Focus group participants will be asked to discuss each message in a funneled discussion format (Krueger, 1988) beginning with open ended discussion of the messages and then probing for more specific responses including how appealing, understandable, culturally acceptable, believable, and whether the message seems relevant to someone like them. Probes will also ask for problems with the messages, including whether there are parts of the message that Mexican-Americans might find offensive and will ask for suggestions for improving the messages. Focus groups will also be asked to rank the messages for interest and perceived effectiveness. Analysis of the focus group transcripts will aim at identifying those stories that are 1. Most likely to increase perceptions of the risk of foodborne illness from home food preparation 2. Most likely to connect with the target audience of Mexican Americans who commonly prepare food at home for themselves and others. 3. Link to food safety practices that are problematic in the Mexican-American community. 4. Provide information about safe practices and/or how to avoid risk. All focus groups will be conducted in Spanish by a native speaker who is also fluent in English. All interviews will be conducted by Dr. Parra, who is bilingual (a native speaker of Spanish and a Mexican-American) and/or by a bi-lingual graduate or undergraduate student employed under this proposal and supervised by Dr. Parra and the Principal and Co-Principal investigators. Dr. Parra has conducted previous focus groups about home food safety issues with Mexican-Americans (Parra, Kim, Shapiro, Gravani, & Bradley, 2014). Focus groups will be video-recorded to assist transcription. Focus group transcripts will be analyzed using thematic content analysis to identify main themes.Experimental tests of messages for effectiveness.Four to six stories that focus group testing and expert opinion indicate are most likely to be effective will be prepared for experiments with Mexican-American home cooks as participants. In the experiments using messages will be compared to existing home food safety messages to determine if the narrative messages are more effective in increasing perceptions of risk and increasing intent to follow safe home food practices. Other measures will explore the mechanisms of effectiveness including measures of identification with the character in the story; liking and empathy will be measured to help determine what aspects of a story are most likely to be effective. Outcomes such as risk perception, intention to follow safe practices, intent to discuss the message with others, and belief in the ability to act to avoid the threat will also be measured.Report findings.Results will be reported at scholarly conferences, in journals and via Webinar to reach researchers, Extension personnel, and others involved in campaigns to reduce foodborne illness resulting from home food preparation. The resulting messages will be made available to Extension and to those addressing home food safety in the Mexican-American community.

Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/18

Outputs
Target Audience:People who cook regularly for family and friends focusing particularly on Mexican-Americans. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Several experiments manipulating aspects of character vulnerability including two longitudinal panel studies comparing Whites and Mexican-Americans--examined the effects of narrative autobiographical accounts of contracting foodborne illness (salmonella or listeria) because of careless food preparation. Studies found that identification increased audience members' behavioral intention to perform safe food handling practices, even controlling for prior beliefs in the longitudinal studies. Counter arguing may mediate this effect. However, in the longitudinal study ethnicity had complex effects on the relationships between identification and egocentric projection and behavioral intention and risk perception. Analysis of the data also indicatedan association between higher strength of ethnic identity and lower reports of personally experiencing foodborne illness and seeing a medical professional for treatment, but the associations with close other's experience of foodborne illness is weaker. These findings combined support prior work indicating that ethnic identity can have a positive influence on individual health outcomes. Analysis of the longitudinal data is ongoing.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Zhou, S.,Shapiro, M. A., Cannon, J & Seipel, M. Effects of Egocentric Projection, Identification, and Ethnicity on Narrative Persuasion in Food Safety Messages
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Cannon, J, Zhou, S., & Shapiro, M.A. Strong Ethnic Identification May Predict Illness:A study of foodborne illness in Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites


Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The research is aimed at improving health and reducing foodborne illness in the Mexican-American community by creating effective first person narrative messages aimed at Mexican-Americans who cook regularly for their families. We identified Mexican-American victims of Foodborne illness to tell their stories in Ithaca, NY, New York City and San Antonio, TX. Several experiments were conducted aimed at testing the effectiveness of various forms of first person narratives to explore the effectiveness of a variety of message forms, in part based on the interviews with victims as well as drawing on other reports of foodborne illness. In particular, messages are aimed at those preparing meals at home for those at high risk of contracting foodborne illness, the elderly, pregnant woman and the very young. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Some results indicate that compared to motivation to protect themselves from foodborne illness, people may feel greater social pressure to avoid getting others sick, particularly those who are particularly vulnerable to foodborne illness (elderly, pregnant women, infants and very young children). Several narratives about someone who prepared food that resulted in others contracting Listeriosis will be tested. Arrangements have been made to draw on a panel of Mexican-American participants to test whether ethnicity of the persons in the story influence perceptions by Mexican-Americans who cook for their families.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Several studies examined the effects of narrative perspective (victim's vs. other's perspective) and potential victim vulnerability (elderly, pregnant women, neonates, and infants) in an autobiographical account of contracting foodborne illness (salmonella) because of careless preparation. Narrative perspective and character vulnerability did not directly influence audience members' risk perception or their intention to perform risk-reducing behaviors. However, participants were more likely to egocentrically project their own mental status into the character's mind and identify with the story character after reading the high-vulnerability victim's account. Identification with the character increased but egocentric projection decreased audience members' perceived seriousness of foodborne illness risk and their behavioral intention to perform safe food-handling practices. Results indicated that there may be important differences between perceptions of the likelihood of risk of foodborne illness and the seriousness of risk. Audience members may be more responsive to messages that change perceptions of the seriousness of the risk more than messages that change perceptions of the likelihood of risk.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2017 Citation: Zhou, S., & Shapiro, M. A. (2017). Using First-person Narratives to Increase Risk Perception of Foodborne Illness and Promote Safe Food Handling Practices among Mexican-Americans. Paper presented at the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Zhou, S., & Shapiro, M. A. (2018 submitted). Manipulating Character Vulnerability and Victim/Other Perspective in First-Person Narratives of Foodborne Illness. Paper submitted to the International Communication Association.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Vimal, A. D. D., Won, A. S., & Shapiro, M. A. (2018 submitted). Virtual Reality and Opinions on Public Health Policy. Paper submitted to the International Communication Association.


Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16

Outputs
Target Audience:The proposed research is aimed at improving health and reducing foodborne illness in the Mexican-American community by creating effective first person narrative messages aimed at Mexican-Americans who cook regularly for their families. Currently we are identifying Mexican-American victims of Foodborne illness and having them tell their stories. We have interviewed victims in New York City and in San Antonio, TX. The project is also conducting experiments investigating the effectiveness of various forms of first person narrative messages. Changes/Problems:Identifying and interviewing Mexican-American victims of foodborne illness has proven more difficult than we anticipated.In the original proposal,groups that represent victims of foodborne illness and lawyers who represent victims agreed tohelp us identify victims. However, for various reasons, these groups have been unable to identify victims we can interview.Considerable effort to contact potential victims through Cooperative Extension programsin New York have so far yielded only one victim in New York. Health officials in New York and other states have been contacted, but have been unable to help for a varied of reasons including patient privacy concerns. We are currently usingmedia reports of foodborne illness outbreaks that seem likely to have involved Mexican-American victims to try to identify and contact victims. We have shifted some of our effort to conducting studies investigating the effectiveness of first person narrative messages using panels of Mexican-Americans that are available through major survey research organizations. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Efforts to identify and interview Mexican-American victims of foodborne illness will continue through extension contacts and identifying victims of foodborne illness outbreaks and contacting them. Several experiments using on-line panels of Mexican-Americans and others will be conducted to further investigate how to best use first person narratives about foodborne illness to create effective messages to encourage safe food practices in the Mexican American community.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Two victims of foodborne illness were identified and interviewed (New York City; San Antonio, TX). Efforts are continuing to identify more victims willing to tell their stories. Experiments were conducted to examine the effects of narrative voice (first or third-person) and story character's ethnicity (White or Mexican-American) on audience perceived risk, intention to follow safe food handling practices, and support for public policies to prevent foodborne illness. 3 conference papers and one publication was generated.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2016 Citation: Lee, T. K., & Shapiro, M. A. (2017). White participants response to characters ethnicity in a foodborne illness story. Paper presented at the Western States Communication Association, Salt Lake City.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Kim, H. K., & Shapiro, M. A. (2016). When bad things happen to a protagonist like you: The role of self in resistance to negatively framed health narratives. Journal of Health Communication, 1227-1235 doi:10.1080/10810730.2016.1240268
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2016 Citation: Zhou, S., & Shapiro, M. A. (2016--submitted). Measuring Actor-Observer Perspective Taking in Narrative Processing. Paper submitted to the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2016 Citation: Zhou, S., & Shapiro, M. A. (2016--submitted). Using First-person Narratives to Increase Risk Perception of Foodborne Illness and Promote Safe Food Handling Practices among Mexican-Americans. Paper submitted to the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA.


Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15

Outputs
Target Audience:Mexican-Americans who cook for their families and for others in the home. Changes/Problems:Many of the agencies that agreed to provide us with the names of Mexican-American victims have found this to be even more difficult than anticipated. We have also contacted a large number of other individuals and agencies to overcome this problem. One substantial barrier to identifyingMexican-American victims offoodborne illnesshas been victim confidentiality. For understandable reasons, many agencies that investigate foodborne illnesses and have access to the victim's contact information will not share it with us unless the victim gives prior approval. Unfortunately these agencies also lack time and resources to contact the victims to seek permission to share their information. We successfully identified and interviewed one victim in the New York City area and are now translating the interview before editing it. We continue to follow leads to identify additional victims of foodborne illness who would be willing to share their illness experiences to prevent others from becoming ill. In the meantime we have moved ahead with message testing experiments based on stories we constructed. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to use the resources we have already used and others to identify victims and gather their stories.We will also conduct a series of experiments to explore factors involved in creating effective first-person narrative messages. We have created several audio narratives and developed a series of measures. Several experiments have been approved by the IRB and are scheduled to be conducted in early 2016.One set of experiments is aimed at exploring how how taking the perspective of the victim/identification with the victim and ethnic identification of both the story character and the viewer can influence risk perception, intention to follow safe practices, intent to discuss the message with others, and belief in the ability to act to avoid the threat of foodborne illness. A second set of experiments is designed to explore the role of unconscious goal activation in influencing the effectiveness of foodborne illness messages. Previous work (Lee and Shapiro, 2015) indicates that story characters who pursue a goal and continue to pursue a goal can unconciously activate that goal in audience members in a way that is different from, but somewhat complementary to the ways that more conscious considerations influence narrative audience members. Lee, T. K., & Shapiro, M. A. (2015). Effects of a story character's goal achievement: modeling a story character's diet behaviors and activating/deactivating a character's diet goal. Communication Research. doi:10.1177/0093650215608236

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? This project called for the investigators to 1. Identify victims and gather their stories. 2. Conduct experiments to test the messages for effectiveness. 3. Report findings to the scholarly community, the extension community and to others involved in home foods safety with the Mexican-American community. To Identify victims of foodborne illness in the Mexican-American community willing to be video-recorded telling their story, we have contacted persons and organizations in New York State and throughout the country.These included a wide variety of individuals and organizations who work with victims of foodborne illnesses, including food safety specialists, microbiologists, epidemiologists, attorneys, physicians and food professionals in state Health Departments, State Departments of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), advocacy groups such as Stop Foodborne Illness (STOP), law firms who represent victims of foodborne illness, as well as other organizations. Focusing on those working in Mexican-American Communities, we also contacted a variety of Extension offices and workers, churches, health clinics, and groups representing Mexican-American physicians, farmworkers, and students, the Health Affairs section of the Mexican Consulate, and other organizations and individuals working with this community. Unfortunately this has been a more difficult task than we or the organizations that agreed to help us anticipated. One substantial barrier has been victim confidentiality. For understandable reasons, many agencies that investigate foodborne illnesses and have access to the victim's contact information will not share it with us unless the victim gives prior approval. Unfortunately these agencies also lack time and resources to contact the victims to seek permission to share their information. We successfully identified and interviewed one victim in the New York City area and are now translating the interview before editing it. We continue to follow leads to identify additional victims of foodborne illness who would be willing to share their illness experiences to prevent others from becoming ill. In the meantime we have moved forward with the goal of conducting experiments to test messages for ability to increase perceived risk of foodborne illness (identified in an earlier survey as an issue) and intent to improve home food preparation practices, and to determine the factors involved in creating effective first-person narrative messages. We have created several audio narratives and developed a series of measures. Several experiments are scheduled to be conducted in early 2016.

Publications