Study Of Child Health Information Awareness "knowledge Gap"

As a economic developing country in an initial period, China in 21^st Century has entered a critical stage. It is also a stage with industrial and institutional transformation, and many social issues have become more and more prominent. One of the key issues is human health. The book fault-line in Chinese Economic Field, published by Land Company in 2003, mentioned that health issue is one of the eights issues that will affect Chinese economic sustainable growth in the future. With the outbreak of series public hygiene events, including SARS, bird flu and water pollution in Songhuajing River, as well as the disease incidence rate of certain chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, health issue has been a big challenge we have to face seriously.As an new research branch of communication field, health communication study can be traced back to 1970s in America and grow rapidly. In less than 30 years, health communication study has a great contribution to prevent the occurrence of such epidemic sicknesses as AIDS and heart disease etc. Health communication study also provides new field for theoretical prove and development of communication. Those hypothesis as agenda setup, knowledge gap and innovation pervasion have been tested, proved and developed in health communication study.This dissertation is developed on the hypothesis that there exists knowledge gap among children under the primary school age. The cultivation of healthy dietetic and trophic habit and the health knowledge inquiry habit from childhood will play a vital role in future healthy status even after growing into adults. According to some researcher, for children, television is a mass media with the highest contact frequency and longest contact time, and it wills a fairly adverse effect on Children's daily dietetic structure. Then, what kind of health knowledge has been contained in TV advertisement? What kind of attitude should parents and children have concerning children health and health knowledge in TV program? What adverse effect will TV advertisement impose on children's dietetic and trophic knowledge? And what influence will family environment on children acknowledge to health information? So far, there is no research on health information conveyed by TV program, and no similar research on TV advertisements' influence on children's health information knowledge. Yet, among domestic knowledge gap hypothesis research, there is no similar research on the formation of knowledge gap based on individual surroundingenvironment such as family environment. The research method introduced in this dissertation, that is, controlling experiment research method, is also a new method never adopted by domestic research on knowledge gap.The introduction of this dissertation puts forward the research hypothesis, and demonstrates the theoretical and reality meaning. Chapter one explains mass media, the meaning of family under children socialization and media controlling models introduced by different families and parents. Chapter two introduces the study of knowledge gap in health communication, and brings forth the basic theoretical hypothesis. Chapter three gives a analysis to information contained in TV program. Chapter four conducts research about the parents' influence on children's health consciousness formation. Chapter five gives an analysis to the results of controlling experiment introduced in this dissertation. And finally, chapter six demonstrates the theoretical contribution and reality meaning of the conclusions, and provides a prospect.The dissertation found the following conclusions based on the research of health information conveyed by TV knowledge advertisement to children from all walks of life: Among all the TV program watched by children, TV advertisement has contained the most health information; There exists knowledge gap of health information conveyed by TV advertisement for children from different family ranks; The formation of knowledge gap among children is related to media controlling models introduced by different families and parents in different social ranks.