Self-Assessment: Blog 1

Self-Assessment - Blog 1 Essay (K. Woods) Appendix B

1. Theory

There is a lot of theoretical literature on attitude change so I have chosen to focus on those most relevant to commercial advertising and public service announcements. Key terms are shown in Appendix A so that the readability of the essay is kept as simple as possible. The reader can gain more detail on social psychology theories by referring to the Appendix at their own convenience. I have shown my understanding of the theories by using examples where possible.

2. Research

I have used several research findings related to this topic, namely HIV/AIDS education, safe driving promotion and skin cancer awareness. These all relate to attempts at attitude change. I have shown that commercial advertisers are effective at persuading people to change attitudes and that the formula they use can be transferred to public service announcements. I have also shown that organisations benefit from measuring the effectiveness of their campaigns as it leads to better campaign designs in the future. It is not only psychologists who are researching social phenomena.

3. Written Expression

I conducted a readability test on my essay. The results were a little confusing: Readability: 33%
Ease: 21.4, Grade: 12, Words 1044 (not including appendices). Sentences per paragraph: 15

When checking manually, I worked out there are on average about 3-6 sentences per paragraph, not 15. Last paragraph on its own has readability score of 42%. I’m wondering if my use of bracketed text impacts on the readability score.

The APA referencing style is accurate (I think!).

I used concept mapping whilst I constructed my draft essay to help myself understand the relationships involved in attitude change such as intergroup and intragroup influences. This in turn helped to clarify my final concept map to be posted.

The style of my blog is simple and clearly presented. I felt that too many external links can distract from the readability of the essay. I’ve used headings and subheadings to break up the text into manageable chunks.

4. Online engagement

I have contributed online although not as much as I would prefer. There are two reasons for this.

1. Time constraints.
2. I don’t like to sit at the computer for extended periods of time. My eyes get very sore and my posture suffers especially when I'm tired. I also find it easy to go off on tangents when fixed to the computer for long periods of time – such as following links which take me away from the initial task. Also, I am enrolled in another unit which also requires a lot of online engagement which is increasing the amount of time I need to be at the computer.

Most of my online contributions can be found within my blog.

I need to explore all the links on the information pages as I was initially unaware that this appendix was required as part of the assessment. I did see somewhere that appendices are optional and I assumed it was referring to appendices we might choose to use as part of the essay rather than a separate assessment criteria. They are not pointed out as clearly as the requirement for a Concept Map, so I missed it.

Other

I included an appendix to detail specific theories more fully. I also included a link to the SunSmart skin cancer campaign as the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria have comprehensive reports on how they have set up campaigns, evaluated their effectiveness and then adapted future campaigns in response to those results.