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Linda F. Alwitt, PhD
Leo Burnett Company Chicago, Ill

JAMA. 1989;261(18):2633.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The article by Fischer et al¹ hypothesizes that warnings on cigarette packages are ineffective for adolescents. Although that hypothesis may be supportable, their study does not adequately demonstrate such support.

There are several problems with the method and interpretation of results in this study that limit its usefulness.

The results are reported out of context. Since there are no control conditions, one cannot tell if the results support the hypothesis. The authors could have collected results for advertisements other than tobacco advertisements for comparison. For assessing eye movements, they could have compared frequency and duration of fixation to other parts of the advertisements besides the warning.

As the authors state, the sample size is too small (n = 45) for a study that is supposed to be generalized to all adolescents.

The claim that 8% of mean total viewing time was devoted to the warning is more . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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