Percent of audience reporting exposure to family planning messages on radio, television, electronic platforms, or in print

Percent of audience reporting exposure to family planning messages on radio, television, electronic platforms, or in print

Percent of audience reporting exposure to family planning messages on radio, television, electronic platforms, or in print

The percent of target audience members who report having heard or seen a family planning (FP) messages on radio, television, electronic platforms (e.g., text messages or websites), or in print in the past six months or some other specified reference period. “Audience” is defined as the intended population for the program, e.g., pregnant women for prenatal care, youth in a specific age range for an adolescent program.

This indicator is calculated as:

(Number of audience members who report exposure to FP messages on radio, television, electronic platforms, or in print during a specific period/Total number of audience members) x 100

Related indicators are the percent of audience who recall exposure to a specific FP message, and percent of audience who know about a source of supply for a specific product.

Data Requirement(s):

Self-report from surveys or from other measurement tools. This indicator can be disaggregated by dissemination channel or by audience characteristics (age, sex, geographic location, rural/urban status, or other characteristics of interest to the program).

National, regional, or local sample surveys with members (preferably a representative sample) of the intended audience

“Reaching” the audience is an important first step to increasing levels of knowledge of the products, practices, or services in question. Reaching a large audience is one of the strengths of mass media communication, and recall of hearing or seeing specific product, practice, or services measures the reach of a given communication campaign or message. It is also a proxy indicator of the popularity of that product, practice, or service.

Evaluators can measure this indicator from a battery of questions to assess the range of communication channels through which the respondent has heard/seen/read about an FP message. The instrument (questionnaire) should ask about all communication approaches used in the campaign or program, as shown below.

Measuring Recall of Messages

The evaluator may also include a channel not used in the communication campaign to gauge the extent of courtesy bias inherent in the responses. Courtesy bias occurs when the respondent tries to give the socially correct answer or one he/she feels will please the interviewer, rather than the true response. This check is particularly useful where the communication program is on an unusual or sensitive topic or in an environment with relatively few communication channels.

A second, more detailed approach is to ask about specific FP messages.  If the questions are closed-ended (requiring a response to pre-established categories or a “yes/no“ to specific items), then respondents will more likely give a socially acceptable rather than a true response, to avoid looking ignorant or to please the interviewer. For this reason, it is advisable, where possible, to ask the respondent to give some defining characteristic of the message (e.g., a logo, slogan) to verify “exposure” to the message.

The evaluator can sum the responses from this battery of items to construct an index of each respondent‘s level of recall in order to estimate a dose-response effect. Since behavior change communication campaigns may have several messages, the evaluator can weigh specific messages more heavily for unaided versus aided recall, and then sum them to arrive at a continuous variable measuring level of recall.

Respondent’s may claim to have heard of or seen an FP message simply to avoid appearing ignorant. Interviewers can confirm the respondent’s actual exposure by asking follow-up questions about the characteristics of the FP message.

communication, knowledge