Behavior change

You need to do a thorough, good job of tracking your behavior over this 10 day period in order to successfully complete the subsequent assignments.

At a minimum, I expect to know:

· Where the behavior occurred

· What you were doing before/during/after the behavior

· Who you were with (parent/sibling/partner/friend—I do not need to know their names)

· What motivated you to engage in the behavior

· What made it hard to engage in the behavior

· Any additional stressors you were experiencing

…For each of the 10 days

You may provide me this information in whatever manner is easiest for you– a chart, small paragraphs, etc– some behaviors will better lend themselves to different methods. This is #5 in the semester-long instructions.

Behavior change assignment 3:

Once you have collected baseline data, review your observations and determine how you might alter your behavior. Review the literature in order to understand what interventions have been examined for the behavior. Read at least 3 empirical studies from peer-reviewed journals (you may have already done this in assignment 1 if you reviewed 6 articles). Based on the literature and your own observations, design a health behavior intervention for yourself. Keep it simple and be very specific .

Implement your intervention for at least 10 days (if applicable). Continue to use your coding system to measure your health behavior. Also note any difficulties you have with implementing your intervention or other factors that may influence your results. This data will be considered your intervention data.

Please turn in a description of your intervention as well as your intervention data

Behavior change assignment 4:

Now that you have collected and considered your data, you are ready to write your paper. Please include the following information.  Use APA format throughout.

1. Begin the introduction section by reviewing at least 3 studies that examine the association between that health behavior and physical health, disease, mortality, etc. (see behavior change assignment 1). These are the first three articles you reviewed for the first assignment. (30 pts)

2. What ways have been studied to modify this behavior? What interventions have been examined in the previous literature? Review at least 3 studies that examine the effect of an intervention on health behavior. These are the second three articles you have already reviewed to design your intervention. (30 pts)

3. End your introduction section with a paragraph briefly summarizing your current study in general terms. Be sure to state what hypothesized effects (e.g. increase, decrease) will your intervention have on your target behavior. (20 pts)

4. Begin the method section by briefly describing the participant (yourself). Next describe how you measured your behavior (i.e. your behavioral coding system) for each phase of the project: baseline and intervention. Then describe your intervention be sure to include enough detail so that someone else could replicate your study. (40 pts)

5. Results section: Report means for baseline and intervention phases (30 pts). Include a figure or graph that depicts your results (10 pts). The text of this section will be very brief.

6. Begin the discussion section by summarizing your findings and placing them in context. How effective was the intervention? Based on your data, did it have the hypothesized effect on your target behavior? Describe other external (peer pressure/social support, life stressors, environmental constraints) or internal (personality, coping, sense of control, other health issues) factors that may have influenced your results. What would you do differently next time? (20 pts)

7. Discuss your results in relation to the pervious studies in the literature– be specific. How was your experience similar or different? Why? (20 pts)

8. Include a brief discussion of generalizability: would your intervention work for someone else? Why or why not? What traits, resources, characteristics, etc. are important? (10 pts)

9. Paper should be in APA format throughout (30 pts)

Your paper should include a:

· title page (NO ABSTRACT NECESSARY)

· introduction (summary of literature on the implications of the target behavior for health and disease, and a review of literature on interventions designed to change this behavior)

· method (description of how you measured target behavior, outcome and a detailed description of intervention used)

· results (baseline and intervention means or frequencies; figures and descriptions; NO STATISTICAL TESTS ARE NECESSARY)

· discussion (conclusions about effectiveness of intervention, recommendations for future)

· References (APA format).

· Figure with caption, formatted correctly

The best papers will integrate course material and concepts into your analysis and final paper. They will involve original ideas expressed clearly and concisely, without extra phrases or padding. Quality papers will be written in a logical fashion that is easy for the reader to follow, thoroughly proofread and spellchecked, with well-developed ideas that are not vague or superficial.

Good papers do not necessarily have to describe an intervention that worked (i.e. you don’t have to change your behavior to receive a good grade) but they will involve a thoughtful analysis of why it did not succeed.