Preferences for seafood consumption advice in pregnant American women

Abstract

Many women of childbearing age, and pregnant and nursing women in particular, do not consume enough seafood to derive optimal health benefits for themselves and their children. We sought to identify how seafood consumption advice could be designed to encourage pregnant women to eat recommended amounts of seafood. In three focus groups with pregnant or recently pregnant American women, we examined reactions to three aspects of seafood consumption advice. First, we found focus group participants preferred gain-framed statements emphasizing benefits of taking action vs. loss-framed statements emphasizing costs of failing to take action. Many participants indicated the gain-framed statements would encourage them to eat seafood and increase their consumption. Second, we compared responses to a recommendation to eat seafood and a recommendation to eat lower mercury seafood because fear of mercury is a known barrier to seafood consumption by pregnant women. We found no clear preference in our focus groups for either message, suggesting potential value of both messages in communication. Lastly, we examined preferences for systems of categorizing seafood into different consumption categories where the number of categories and the number of species listed in each category varied. We found shorter, dichotomous lists of species to eat and avoid were preferred by some participants for their clarity and ease of use. Longer, more comprehensive lists with additional species and consumption categories (e.g., eat once a week), however, were preferred by many participants because they provided more options and were more likely to be used as a reference. These findings suggest using a layered approach to communication might be helpful by providing short, dichotomous lists of best seafood to eat and seafood to be avoided followed by a link to a longer, more complete list of recommended seafood to be eaten and seafood that should be avoided.

Keywords: Communicating health information; Gain-loss framing; Pregnant women; Seafood consumption.