Effects of cultural cues on perceptions of HPV vaccination messages among parents and guardians of American Indian youth

The encouragement of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination is an important goal for interventions among American Indians (AIs), given the significant disparities AIs face with respect to HPV cancers. Tailoring intervention messages to the culture of message recipients has been proposed as a potentially useful intervention approach, yet cultural tailoring of HPV messages has never been tested among AIs. The objective of this research was to test the effectiveness of cultural tailoring in positively affecting two variables that have been proposed as mechanisms of tailoring effects, namely identification with the message and perceptions of message effectiveness. We conducted a between subjects randomized experiment among 300 parents of AI children. Participants saw one of three messages that differed in the extent to which the message contained cues to AI culture. Analysis of variance (anova) showed that participants identified more strongly (partial eta2 = 0.10) with messages that included stronger AI cultural features and thought these messages were more convincing (partial eta2 = 0.14) and pleasant (partial eta2 = 0.11) compared to messages that included weaker cultural cues. Effects on message identification and convincingness were moderated by AI identity, such that the more participants identified themselves with AI culture, the stronger the effects of the culturally-tailored messages were (R2change = 0.043 and 0.020 in hierarchical regression analyses). These findings suggest good potential for cultural tailoring to encourage HPV vaccination among AIs.