Understanding how older adults engage with direct-to-consumer advertisements: A persona analysis approach

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:

Direct-to-consumer advertisements (DTCAs) present a unique opportunity to extend medical education beyond traditional healthcare settings and into the daily lives of patients. This is particularly valuable for populations with changing healthcare needs and limited health knowledge, such as older adults. DTCAs have the capacity to provide accessible education and promote patient engagement in care, but they are not currently maximizing their educational impact. As pharmaceutical companies continue to invest in DTCAs, there is a growing gap in understanding how they are perceived and acted on by US adults.

This study was constructed following human factors principles derived from the Communication-Human Information Processing model (C-HIP) which allows for assessment of what information is retained and influential in decision making. C-HIP synthesizes constructs of human information processing and communication theories to examine how information is understood by a recipient.

This study aimed to answer the following question: How do salient elements of DTCAs and older adult psychographic characteristics influence how they understand and act on presented health information?

Methods:

25 older adult participants (age > 60 ) watched a one minute DTCA while wearing eye tracking glasses then participated in a semi-structured interview. Eye tracking glasses recorded which visual elements of the commercial participants focused on, such as textual and background components. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded using both deductive and inductive approaches.

Results:

Preliminary data analysis of participant viewing behaviors and psychographic characteristics revealed three main personas of older adult medication information seeking and decision making. These include older adults who: (1) actively avoid taking medications, (2) prefer their provider to control medication decisions, and (3) independently seek health information so they can participate in medication decisions with their health team. When assessing content recall from the commercial, older adults in persona three were more likely to ask their provider about the advertised drug and tended to remember details about the medication from the DTCA. In contrast, older adults in personas one or two would not ask their provider about the medication and recalled more details about non-medication, background elements of the commercial.

Conclusions:

Constructing older adult personas provides insights into the heterogeneity amongst older adult approaches to engaging with health information. Each persona represents unique information priorities and personal characteristics of older adults when viewing advertisements, thus presenting a need for tailored patient-centered messaging in commercials.

Implications for research and/or practice:

By understanding how older adults in persona three were more responsive to information presented in DTCAs provides an opportunity to achieve effective education and support patient engagement by emphasizing elements that supported their cognitive processes and commercial viewing behaviors. Prioritizing patient-centered messaging in medication advertisements is the next step in enhancing their educational value and empowering patients to take ownership of their health.