Do all those advertisements you see for drugs affect your perceptions of risk for disease?

Park and Grow (2008) questioned whether exposure to direct-to-consumer advertising for antidepressants affected people’s perceptions of the prevalence of depression and their own risk of depression. The file “depression advertising.sav” includes a simulated version of some of the variables used in Park & Grow’s research. The file includes data from 221 (simulated) undergraduate students enrolled in introductory advertising classes. The variables in the file are Age (in years), Experience (whether they knew people with and treated for depression, the sum of 3 questions each coded 1 [no] or 2 [yes]), Familiarity with advertisements for depression drugs (a sum of familiarity on a 1 to 7 scale for six antidepressant ads, with high scores representing greater familiarity), perceived Prevalence of depression (students’ perceptions of U.S. prevalence of depression, in percentages, so that a high score represents a higher estimate of the prevalence of depression), and Risk, students’ perceptions of their own risk of suffering from depression in their lives (percentage). Examine descriptive statistics for these variables to make sure they are reasonable (given the brief description of each). The key variables are perceived Risk and Familiarity with advertising. What is the correlation between these two variables; are they related? Regress Risk on Familiarity, while controlling for Age, Experience, and Prevalence. Does familiarity with antidepressant advertising affect perceived Risk of depression? Which variable is most important for explaining perceived Risk? Provide a formal, English, and real world interpretation of your findings.