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Empirical Generalizations for Social Marketing 207

for studies with meta in the title and intervention anywhere in the document.
Studies listed in the tables were found primarily by searching online data-
bases using the keywords “meta” or “research synthesis,” plus other terms
relevant to social marketing concerns (e.g., as shown in the contents of this
book or listed as example behavioral objectives by Kotler & Lee, 2008).
The sets of generalizations described earlier are each reported in a sepa-
rate table. The tables all have the same format. The source of the generali-
zation lists the authors and indicates when and where the results were
published. Then, the nature of the generalization is described. When avail-
able, the number of observations is listed. These typically reveal either the
number of individuals studied or the number of econometric estimates
evaluated in the original sources used in the meta-analyses. The type and
magnitude of the effect sizes are then listed, together with their variability
in terms of either standard deviations (SD) or 95% confidence intervals
(CI), if available. Average effect sizes are shown as OR and d, if the sources
report them as such, and are then converted to r for better comparability
across studies. Finally, comments may be provided to indicate other study
findings or to help in interpreting the generalizations.
Given the variety of generalizations examined, their organization in the
tables is necessarily somewhat arbitrary (e.g., Table 8.1 lists findings from
an assessment of previous meta-analyses, followed by findings from stud-
ies of interventions in mass media and online, followed by results for
substance-abuse interventions, interventions on obesity prevention, child-
related interventions on media use and school bullying, and so on). For
each type of generalization, related results are presented together in chron-
ological order. When a source, topic, or comment is identical to the previ-
ous row of the table, it is indicated as (same) rather than being repeated.
An obvious caveat in using the tables is that they summarize large
amounts of information to produce broad generalizations. Omitted details
and additional insights are available in the meta-analytic sources and the
underlying studies.

Interventions on Health and Well-Being
Table 8.1 reports findings for 25 sets of interventions, including health
communication campaigns, substance-abuse and obesity prevention, safe-
sex practices, driver safety, organ donation, pro-environmental behaviors,
and others. A positive generalization of the results is that a variety of inter-
vention types produce desirable changes on average. Without exception,
the average effect sizes are in the intended direction—lower weight, less
substance abuse, reduced school bullying, and so on.