ISBN 0 7559 1169 5 (Web only publication)
This document is also available in pdf format (176k)
Campaign overview
- The Scottish Executive launched the organ donation campaign in February 2004 (Phase 1). Research was conducted in two waves around the Phase 1 campaign burst (16 February - 7 March). The first was a short, pre-advertising stage of research conducted in early February 2004 (Wave 1), and Wave 2 was an evaluation after the advertising was complete in late March.
- The campaign objective was to encourage people to discuss their wishes regarding organ donation with their family.
- The second phase of the campaign ran during August 2004 which used radio advertising only, and there was no national press advertising.
- This research (Wave 3) was conducted in October 2004 to evaluate the effectiveness of the Phase 2 campaign burst and to explore the attitudes of Scotland's population towards organ donation.
Highlights
- At Wave 3, 87% of people said that they agreed with the statement that Everyone should discuss their wishes on organ donation with their next of kin. This indicates a slight drop in agreement from 92% in Wave 2. As the level of disagreement has remained relatively stable however, this would indicate that a high level of consensus remains.
- There was a 10% drop in people believing the government could do more, between Wave 2 (84%) and Wave 3 (74%). When asked in what way the government could do more, 49% (of those who thought more could be done) thought they should advertise more.
Implications
Given the number of advertising messages that the public are confronted by every day, there is an expectation that recall of a particular advertising message will be high during and shortly after a campaign, but not so much after this period. This is particularly the case for smaller scale campaigns such as Organ Donation. The drop in awareness between the two research waves may, in part, be explained by the time period that passed between the end of the campaign and the research fieldwork taking place.
Despite the drop in advertising recall, 49% of those who thought the government could do more supported further government advertising. This indicates that advertising campaigns such as this are considered valuable by the people of Scotland.