HD480 Unit 6 Seminar Reflection on Material Review Example

Confident About the Reading Level, Doubtful About Everything Else: A Unit 6 Seminar Reflection on a Shingles Vaccine Card

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

HD480: Health Communication, Social Marketing, and Advocacy

Unit 6 Seminar Reflection

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The seminar, the classmates and the card are composite; the communication index, the message testing guide and the reflective model cited are real.

What I Brought

My card opened with a large headline telling readers they were eligible from fifty, a photo of a woman in work clothes standing between warehouse shelves, and inside a lifetime risk figure of roughly one person in three, with plain notes on two doses and side effects. I had checked the reading level with a formula and it came out near sixth grade. I also had scored the card against the CDC's index for clear communication and done well (Baur & Prue, 2014). I expected praise. I had even drafted a note thanking classmates in advance for their kind comments, which embarrasses me a little now. I had spent most of my time on wording and very little imagining a specific worker holding the card on a break, tired, with ten minutes before the line started again.

What My Classmates Saw

Three things, none of which my checks had caught.

The photograph. A classmate who works in a warehouse said the woman in the picture looked like a model in a stock photo, too clean and too posed, and that men in the segment, about half of it, would see a card meant for women. Another said a real coworker's face, with permission, would carry more weight than any stock image.

The statistic. Two classmates read "1 in 3" as meaning one in three of them would get shingles soon. One said it made the card feel like a scare. The lifetime framing I meant was invisible to them. A third added that a frightening number with no immediate action attached can make people avoid a message entirely, which was the opposite of what the card needed.

The word qualify. A classmate who processes benefits said "qualify" sounds like paperwork, eligibility rules and forms, the opposite of what I wanted. To a reader who has filled out many forms, "you qualify" can mean "now prove it."

My card passed the tests I had chosen, reading level and a checklist, and failed the one that mattered, which was what real readers from the audience understood when they looked at it.

What Changed

I had treated readability as the measure of a good material. The seminar showed me that reading level tells you whether people can decode the words, not what they take the words to mean. A guide to developing health messages makes the same point: drafts should be pretested with members of the intended audience, because experts and writers cannot reliably predict how readers will interpret them (National Cancer Institute, 2004).

I also saw that I had written for an imagined reader, a woman like the composite in my profile, and forgotten the men in the segment entirely. A profile is meant to sharpen the writer's picture of the audience, but held too tightly it can narrow that picture to one person.

Gibbs's reflective cycle asks how I felt during the event. Honestly, defensive at first, then curious once the third classmate spoke, because each point was specific and none was about my effort (Gibbs, 1988). By the end of the hour I was taking notes faster than anyone, which says something about how very quickly a writer's defensiveness can turn into interest when criticism is concrete.

The Revisions I Plan

Replace the stock photo with two real workers from the distribution center, one man and one woman, with written permission. Rewrite the risk line so it says plainly that the figure covers a whole lifetime and that risk climbs after fifty. Replace the word qualify with a plain statement that the shot is recommended for everyone fifty and older. Then test the revised card with workers before printing.

What I Will Do Differently

I will put a draft in front of members of the audience before I put it in front of a readability formula. I will also ask testers what they think each key phrase means, not just whether they like the card. And I will make sure the testers include people who do not look like the composite reader in my profile, since the seminar showed that my picture of the audience had quietly shrunk to one person.

A Question I Still Have

How many testers are enough? My classmates caught three problems with only a handful of readers, which makes me wonder whether a small test can be as useful as a large one.

References

Baur, C., & Prue, C. (2014). The CDC Clear Communication Index is a new evidence-based tool to prepare and review health information. Health Promotion Practice, 15(5), 629-637. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839914538969

Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.

National Cancer Institute. (2004). Making health communication programs work (NIH Publication No. 04-5145). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.