Social Marketing Risk-Framing Approaches for Dental Sealants in Rural American Indian Children.

Objective: To compare three variants of a culturally relevant and theoretically based message to determine the most influential risk-framing approach for improving intention to place dental sealants for preschool children.

Design And Sample: A convenience sample of adult, American Indian participants (n = 89) attending a community health fair were assigned to view a gain-framed, loss-framed, or mix-framed dental sealant message.

Measures: We compared participants' scores on a 46-item survey to determine the relative effect of the frame assignment on seven indices of behavior change.