Grammatical style of nutrition education messages

Nutrition education messages were written about eight different foods or food products in eight different styles. Styles were suggestions, instructions using 'should', rhetorical questions using 'how about' or 'why not', statements of fact, positive commands, positive commands followed by negative commands or vice versa. Subjects (n 160) rated messages for persuasiveness and also stated how often they already complied with each message. Scores were adjusted to remove the contributions related to sex, age group, social class, reported compliance and food about which the message had been written. The main factor influencing score for persuasiveness was the extent to which subjects claimed to be already complying with the messages. There were no significant effects of the method of construction of messages on score using one-way analysis of variance.