The Opportunities and Challenges of School-Based Research for Social Marketers

Children and adolescents are often the primary target audience of social marketing campaigns and interventions. The prevalence of youth-directed campaigns has risen dramatically in the past decade, in part due to the increase in children's health problems (e.g., obesity, asthma, substance use). As a result, researchers increasingly approach schools and ask them to be collaborative partners in helping them to evaluate social marketing campaigns prior to more widespread dissemination. Just as social marketers must understand the facilitators of and barriers to behavior change in their primary target audience(s), schools must also be thoroughly understood and supported for collaborative success. While schools are a convenient and often effective channel for conducting youth-based social marketing evaluation research, partnering with schools can present some unique challenges. This article describes some of the issues social marketers should consider when working with schools on evaluation research.