Improving AMBER alerts: results from a national experimental study of wireless emergency alerts

In the United States, Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are used to notify the public of abducted children. However, there is no established guidance for writing AMBER Alert WEAs, and the vast majority have been incomplete. Using three randomly assigned groups recruited via a Qualtrics survey panel, we test an incomplete message containing a link to additional information, which reflects baseline messaging practices, against complete ‘plain language’ messages written using the MEP Message Framework with and without links. We find that plain language messages outperformed the baseline message when participants did not click the link for outcomes including message understanding, belief, deciding, information sufficiency, self-efficacy, information seeking, and information recall, and that the frequency of participants who clicked the link was low across all conditions. Results support the use of complete plain language AMBER Alerts to better inform the public of child abduction cases and enhance outcomes that motivate taking action.