Karen Kozachok Gutierrez - Comment

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments. My relevant background is as follows: 7 years as Director of Global Dialogue for Effective Stop-Smoking Campaigns, an initiative that helps ministries of health and NGOs develop more effective mass media campaigns to reduce tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke. 6 years as a CDC Fellow for the Office on Smoking or Health's Health Communications Branch where my role was to develop best practices, campaign training tools and to provide assistance to departments of health and NGOs on their tobacco counter-marketing campaigns. 13 years in Marketing/Advertising with Procter & Gamble where my roles including marketing to Hispanics, youth and other specific populations. Here are my comments: 1) I don’t know if it’s possible given the 3000 base size of respondents, but ideally to gauge understanding of the various numbered statements, you would ask the respondents to say/type what they understood each statement to mean. That would give you a good understanding of whether they “get” the message or just say they do. Reading and coding the responses would be time-consuming but valuable. 2) Assuming that the research will also provide an example list of chemicals/ingredients for the respondents to react to, I would also include a link to a website (with an easy to remember name) that presumably they could visit to get more information about any/all of the ingredients. Then I’d ask whether they think they would visit the site. 3) Other variables that are important in terms of helping or hindering communication include: a. color of font—dark colors on lighter backgrounds are usually easier to read b. size of font--the size of the cigarette packs will limit this, so it’s important to do the research using the size of font that will be feasible/necessary c. caps or lower case-- some people feel that words in all caps are more difficult to read than caps at beginning of words followed by lower case d. type of font--som