Informative and decorative pictures in health and safety posters for children

Abstract

Health and safety (H&S) campaigns for children are often aimed at six to twelve year olds, with the same materials targeted across this age range despite their developmental and cognitive differences. We conducted a study to examine whether three different visual approaches to H&S posters influenced children's engagement with and ability to elaborate from the poster content, and preferences for the posters. The study was conducted with children from two age groups (7-8 and 10-11 years of age). The posters were designed with the same verbal information but we varied the presented pictorial information: Poster 1 had informative pictorial information; Poster 2 had decorative pictorial information; poster 3 had no pictorial information. The study consisted of a written activity and a discussion. The results suggest children from each age group have different responses to the different kinds of posters tested, and particularly age-related preferences for informative or decorative pictures. We describe four responses tendencies that should be considered for further research.