Design and participants
sports-related alcohol
EVENT
The study design was a pre-post, between-subjects experiment comprising three counter-advertising conditions: (A) control (neutral ad); (B) counter-ad exposing alcohol harms; (C) counter-ad exposing alcohol sponsorship and harms. A sample of Australian adults was recruited by Ipsos from their non-probability online panel (and panel partners). Panel members were eligible to participate if they were aged 18–49 years and planned to watch an upcoming 2021 NRL State of Origin game. The NRL State of Origin series is an elite sporting event in Australia that features extensive alcohol marketing [Following confirmation of their study eligibility, participants completed a pre-test (baseline) questionnaire, viewed a 30-second version of their assigned counter-ad twice and then reported their cognitive and emotional responses to the ad. Participants were randomly allocated to counter-advertising condition using a least-filled quota pre-programmed procedure set up in the backend of the baseline survey by Ipsos. For each condition, gender (male/female) and age (18–34/35–49 years) quotas were applied to achieve a relatively even distribution of participant characteristics in each condition at baseline. An alcohol consumption screening question was also asked of participants at the start of the baseline survey to obtain an approximate 80/20 split of at least monthly drinkers (cf. irregular/non-drinkers). Participants were invited to complete a short exposure task on each of the intervening days between the baseline survey and the game, which was intended to increase their dose of exposure to the assigned ad. Each day, the task rotated between exposing participants to either a 15- or 30-second version of their assigned counter-ad before asking them to answer a single rating question. To test for effects of the counter-ads on support for policies restricting sports-related alcohol marketing and beliefs about the alcohol industry, participants completed a post-test (follow-up) survey within four days of watching the game. Based on previous experimental studies testing audience responses to sport sponsorship [