Taking a Bite Out of Crime - The Impact of a Mass Media Crime Prevention Campaign

• NCJ Number: 93350
• Author(s): G J O'Keefe; H Mendelsohn; K Reid-Nash; E Henry; B Rosenzweig; Spetnagel
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 78 pages
• Grant Number(s): 81-IJ-CX-0050
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Justice (NIJ); US Dept of Justice NIJ Pub
• Corporate Author: University of Denver
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

An evaluation of the Take a Bite Out of Crime national media campaign suggests that the campaign had a marked and consistent influence on citizens' perceptions and attitudes regarding crime prevention, as well as on their taking specific preventive actions.

Abstract

The Take a Bite Out of Crime campaign, sponsored by the Crime Prevention Coalition and conducted by Dancer Fitzgerald Sample for the Advertising Council, has been running since 1979. It uses a cartoon dog character arrayed in a trenchcoat in public service announcements (PSA) and materials distributed by community projects throughout the country. The campaign promotes citizen involvement in crime prevention efforts, mainly through increased burglary self-protection and neighborhood cooperative activities. The evaluation design included a national probability sample survey of 1,200 adults during November 1981, interviews with 1,049 adults in Buffalo, N.Y., Denver, and Milwaukee in September 1979, and followup interviews with 426 of these original respondents in November 1981. Over half the national sample said they had seen or heard at least one of the campaign's PSAs as of late 1981, and most were favorably impressed by the ads. Individuals exposed to the campaign exhibited significant increases over those not exposed in their knowledge of crime prevention, how effective they thought citizen crime prevention efforts were, and how confident they felt about being able to protect themselves from crime. Exposure to the campaign was significantly related to increases in six of the seven preventive activities most emphasized in the televised PSAs. The rather scattershot nature of the campaign's dissemination appears to have produced a wide range of effects across an even wider range of people, due to a host of interactions among personal, social, and environmental factors. The report discusses the evaluation findings' implications for future progress of the Take a Bite Out of Crime campaign. Tables and over 50 references are supplied. The appendix provides additional analyses of the national survey sample and campaign materials.