Behavior Change

Behavior Change Paper – 45 points

This assignment will provide you with the opportunity to engage in personal behavioral change and to reflect on your own change process. My goals of this assignment are for you to: A) experience what it is like to attempt to change a behavior, B) apply concepts of learning and behavior change, C) refine your skills at using APA style, and D) hopefully benefit personally by making healthy behavioral changes!

At the beginning of the semester, I will ask you to choose a behavior that you would like to work on changing over the course of the semester. Since you will be sharing the behavior with the instructor and a small group of your classmates, please choose a behavior that you are comfortable sharing in some detail. Please select a behavior that you have some reasonable motivation to change so that this activity is meaningful to you! You might choose to:

· Start a behavior, such as beginning an exercise or weight-loss program; or starting to cook a new meal each week;

· Increase/improve a behavior, such as reading course material before class more often, improving sleep hygiene, meditating more frequently, being more assertive, or eating mindfully more often;

· Or decrease a behavior, such as reducing caffeine use, stopping biting your nails, decreasing phone usage, viewing less television, etc.

Over the course of the term, I am asking you to make a serious attempt to change the behavior using theories and interventions from the course. I recommend that you keep a journal to help you do this. During class, we will have regular discussions, activities, and reflection opportunities that you can include in this journal which will help you identify behavior change techniques you will use. You can continue to use the journal outside of class to track your progress and prepare to write this paper.

Optional: If your goal is related to any topics included in the 'Learn to Live' programs, you can use this resource as part of your behavior change plan. It is available free of charge by going to www.learntolive.com/partnersLinks to an external site. and entering the code 'STTHOMAS.' You will first complete a self-assessment to see which area(s) you may benefit from the most, and will have the opportunity to choose any program you would like to complete. Programs include: sleep, stress/anxiety/worry, social anxiety, substance use, or depression. All programs are completely confidential and I will not have access to your results.

Once you have spent several weeks implementing your behavior change plan, please write a 5-6 page paper, double-spaced, in APA format (7th ed.). Make sure you cite the readings and other course material throughout. Your paper should address each of the questions below, and each one is worth 5 points. The paper will be graded based on evidence of critical thinking, depth of analysis, and evidence of personal reflection.

Please answer the questions in the order listed, and include first-level headings for Baseline, Implementation, and Post-Intervention, with second-level headings for the eight sub-topics. A copy of the grading rubric is provided on Canvas.

Baseline

1) Behavior, Beginnings, and Goals

· Provide an operational definition of the behavior you want to change and your goal (ex: "I want to sleep at least 7 hours per night at least 5 days per week. I will measure the hours slept based on time in bed with my eyes closed, regardless of whether I am truly asleep.")

· Provide a detailed measure of where you began (ex: "I tracked my sleep for one week before beginning this project. I averaged 5.5 hours of sleep per night, and the hours ranged from 4.5-7 hours per night. I tended to sleep more hours on the weekend and fewer hours during the week. I drink coffee daily to try to be more alert and rely on naps on the weekends to catch up with sleep. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being very alert, I would estimate that I feel a 3 most days.")

· Make sure you include quantitative measurements when possible (but qualitative ones are encouraged too!).

2) Functional Analysis

· Complete a functional analysis/ functional behavior assessment to understand some of the factors that may be influencing your initial behavior at baseline. For example, your goal might be to exercise more, but your initial behavior might be not exercising at all.

· Include this functional analysis, including antecedents, your current behavior, and consequences in your paper and share what you learned from doing so. It may be helpful to include a chart in your paper to visualize this!

· Remember that your "A's" are the things occurring in the environment that encourage your initial behavior and make it more likely. So if your initial behavior is 'eating a lot of junk food' then increased stress or lack of time might be "A's" that lead to that behavior. If your initial behavior is 'not exercising' the same things could apply.

· Remember that your "C's" are things occurring in the environment after your initial behavior. So if your initial behavior is 'eating a lot of junk food' then what happens after you do that? Do you feel relaxed? Do you have more free time than if you had prepared a healthy meal? If your initial behavior is 'not exercising' how do you feel after you choose not to exercise? What happens in your environment?

Implementation

3) Stages of Change

· What stage of change applied to your behavior initially? Did it change as you proceeded with the process? How did it influence the interventions you used along the way?

4) Interventions Used

· Please choose at least three interventions to try during the semester. Then, in your paper, tell us which interventions you utilized to change your behavior. Be specific about which ones you used and how they were utilized.

· Examples from the course might include: reinforcement/punishment, systematic desensitization/exposure, behavioral activation, Premack principle, stimulus control, modeling, increasing self-efficacy or self-regulation, changing schemas, scaffolding, incorporating the mesosystem, relaxation/meditation, urge surfing, values clarification, examining your motivation, etc.

· You are encouraged to employ cognitive principles in addition to strictly behavioral ones.

5) Problems and Challenges

· What problems and challenges did you encounter along the way and how did you respond to them?

Post-Intervention

6) Outcome

· Operationally define the outcome. (Ex: my goal was to increase my sleep to 7 hours per night at least 5 nights per week; I have been mostly successful because I now average 6 hours per night and sleep at least 7 hours 1-2 days per week)

· Do you feel you were successful?

· If you were successful, what benefits have accompanied the change? Are there any losses or negative consequences associated with the change?

· If you were unsuccessful, were there still some benefits or positive results

7) Future Considerations

· What do you see in the future for this behavior? What would help you maintain your progress or, if unsuccessful, what would help you be likely to make a change attempt again? What would you do differently if you had to initiate the attempt next semester?

8) Implications for Counseling

What have you learned from this process that you can take with you into your counseling work? I really want to hear your insights here! Please avoid the temptation to make this part very brief if you're running out of room. Instead, make small edits to other areas to ensure you leave room for this part.

There will also be 5 points for APA style, so be sure to review how to format title pages, headings, references, etc. on Canvas.