Department of Advertising

Miscomprehension

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

As this web site develops, in the space below we will provide a bibliography of articles and books relevant to this topic. To the extent practical, bibliographic references will be annotated.

Anyone interested in submitting additional bibliographic material for this reference page, or for any of the others at this site, is welcome to send such material via e-mail to jef@mail.utexas.edu. Please type the references in the same format as is used here, and keep the annotations to a few sentences.

  1. Fliece R. Gates and Wayne D. Hoyer (1985). Measuring Miscomprehension: A Comparision of Alternative Formats. Advances in Consumer Research, 13: 143-46.

    This paper examines the performance of two question formats (true-false and multiple choice) for measuring miscomprehension. The research is conducted with 168 undergraduate students and uses as stimuli 30-second television commercials chosen for the 1980 Jacoby, Hoyer, and Sheluga study. Findings indicate that while the rate of miscomprehension is high for both question forms (ranging from 9% to 36%), the true-false questions tend to result in higher degrees of miscomprehension.

  2. Ivan L. Preston and Jef I. Richards (1985). The Relationship of Miscomprehension to Deceptiveness in FTC cases. Advances in Consumer Research, 13: 138-42.

    This paper assesses work of Jacoby, Hoyer, and Sheluga on miscomprehension of message content. By describing the theoretical relationship, similarities and differences between miscomprehension and deceptiveness concepts, the authors question the notion by Jacoby, et al. that what is challenged as deceptiveness is actually only miscomprehension.

  3. Wayne D. Hoyer, Rajendra K. Srivastava, and Jacob Jacoby (1984). Sources of Miscomprehension in Television Advertising. Journal of Advertising, 13 (2): 17-26.

    Factors related to miscomprehension of televised ads for various products and services are explored in a study of 1978 consumers intercepted in shopping malls nationwide. Results indicate that a significant portion of miscomprehension can be accounted for by the differences in both message content and the receivers of the message.

  4. Jacob Jacoby, Magaret C. Nelson, Wayne Hoyer, and Hal G. Gueutal (1983). Probing the Locus of Causation in the Miscomprehension of Remedial Advertising Statements. Advances in Consumer Research, 11: 379- 84.

    A multi-dimensional scaling techniques is applied to a set of corrective advertising statements to identify the likely causes of miscomprehension of the messages. The research consists of 133 undergraduate students and involves as stimuli the corrective ads for two national analgesic brands. The results suggest that consumer miscomprehension of the message may result from decoding failures on the part of the recipient rather than encoding failures on the part of the source.

© 1995, 1996, 1997 Jef I. Richards
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