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31969 Developing a Psychographic Profile of the Uninsured

Frank Funderburk, MA, Office of Communications, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Baltimore, MD, Diane Field, PhD, Strategic Research & Campaign Management Group, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Baltimore, MD and Clarese Astrin, PhD, Office of Communications, CMS, Division of Research, Baltimore, MD

Background:  Audience segmentation research can play a key role in developing effective social marketing campaigns.  CMS has developed a 6-segment approach to help improve our understanding of key audience characteristics that influence consumer reactions to our educational and outreach materials.  In this presentation, we describe how we have applied this approach to improve communication with audiences that will be participating in the emerging health insurance markets.

Program background: This work builds on our prior efforts that have used geographic, demographic, and psychographic approaches to understand our various target audiences.

Evaluation Methods and Results: A mixed methods research strategy allowed us to define and validate six audience segments: Informed, Healthy & Educated; Sick, Active & Worried; Mature & Secure; Healthy & Young; Passive & Skeptical; and Vulnerable & Unengaged.  We conducted a nationally representative survey (n = 4155) that allowed us to classify respondents into one of the six segments and collect additional information about health insurance status and health decision-making styles.  We found that likelihood of being insured was related to segment classification and that these effects were evident even when the effects of a variety of demographic and socioeconomic variables were controlled (e.g., age, gender, employment status, educational level, marital status, and race).  The profile of effects was used to help suggest messaging strategies for further testing in refining approaches for consumer outreach related to new health insurance benefits available under the Affordable Care Act.  Data matching with commercially available databases was used to validate and refine the strategies suggested.

Conclusions:  An effective outreach program can be informed supported by well-defined audience segmentation.

Implications for research and/or practice: This work illustrated how audience segmentation can be used to improve outreach effectiveness.

See more of: The Importance of Audiences
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