Prevention Magazine just published results from a survey in which they asked consumers how much attention they pay to prescription drug advertising. Here are the highlights:

• 79% of consumers say they saw and heard risks TV ads are required to cover.

• 75% say they find the information useful.

• With regard to print ads, 48% said they understood drug risks, and 52% said they understood benefits.

Interesting results, perhaps suggestive. But they are not conclusive. Any good researcher, psychologist or marketer should know better than to rely on self-reporting to assess outcomes. When you ask people what they heard and didn’t hear, or understood and didn’t understand, their answers are more likely to reflect their self-concept than the facts.

This research would have been more revealing had it included a simple quiz. It would be interesting to see if the 79% who said they saw and heard risks could answer quiz questions about the drugs that the 21% could not.

—Steve Cuno