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Health Psychology Summer 2021

Behavior Change Project

Individual health behaviors are increasingly important to personal well-being and future health risk. Health psychologists often seek to intervene at the level of the individual in order to modify behavior. For this assignment you are asked to select a health behavior of your own that you would like to change- either a current behavior that you would like to reduce, or a behavior that you currently do not do (or do infrequently) that you would like to increase. Then you will familiarize yourself with the literature regarding that behavior’s exact impact on health and the interventions that have been most effective for altering that behavior. After collecting baseline data on your behavior, you will implement an intervention and measure whether it alters your behavior. Finally, you will write an APA-style paper that discusses your project.

Here are the tasks you will need to accomplish in order to complete this project:

1. After reviewing the attached list, select a specific health behavior whose frequency you wish to either increase or decrease. You may tailor the behavior to be more applicable to you. For example, you may chose to increase physical activity by walking more, doing yoga, or training for a marathon. If you wish to modify another health behavior not on the list, please discuss it with me. If you have a current mental or physical condition that could be affected by this behavior, please consult your health care provider PRIOR to changing the behavior.

2. Review the research literature about your chosen health behavior. Why would you want to modify the behavior? What are the benefits to your health? What are the risks? Are there any gaps or controversies in the literature? Read at least 3 high-quality studies. These may be either empirical studies or review papers from peer-reviewed journals. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 (and others) of your text may be a useful starting point and might provide you with a few sources to get you started (depending on your topic).

3. Based on your reading of the literature, determine how you will measure your health behavior of choice and create a coding system to collect data. You will have to decide (i.e. operationally define) what constitutes the behavior. One option is to simply measure the frequency of the behavior. This may be as simple as recording the number of times a given behavior does or does not happen (e.g. # of cigarettes smoked) over a certain period of time. You will need to define the behavior precisely. Does taking a single puff of a cigarette count? Other health behaviors may involve more complex measurement methods. This will require searching the literature to learn about how it has been measured in other studies, and possibly coming up with your own original way of measuring it. Regardless, the way your behavior and/or outcome are measured should be given careful thought BEFORE data collection is begun. All variables must be quantifiable.

5. For a minimum of 10 days, record the frequency of the health behavior of interest using the coding system developed in step 3 (above). This data will be your baseline data. For example, for a project on smoking cessation, you would record how many cigarettes were smoked each day for 10 days. If appropriate, you may also wish to record when, where, and with whom, you do or do not perform the behavior.

6. 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. Based on the literature and your own observations, design a health behavior intervention for yourself. Keep it simple and be very specific .

7. 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.

8. Once your intervention has concluded, compare your baseline and intervention data. Did your target behavior increase, decrease, or stay the same? Why do you think you got the results that you did? What outside factors influenced your results? Would the intervention work for other people? Under other circumstances? Are your findings consistent with previous studies? Once you have thought through the answers to these questions, you are now ready to write the paper.

Writing the paper :

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 #2 above).

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.

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 (see # 5 above).

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.

5. Results section: Report means for baseline and intervention phases. Include a figure or graph that depicts your results. 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?

7. Discuss your results in relation to the pervious studies in the literature. How was your experience similar or different? Why?

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?

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.

DUE DATES:

Project sub-assignment Due Date

Study prospectus, 3 health references, and 3 intervention references (copy/paste abstracts and citation of each paper and turn it in—steps 1-3 in overall instructions)	Wed June 30 20% of project grade
Baseline data collected and turned in	Sat July 10 5% of project grade
Intervention designed, implemented and data collected	Tue July 20 15 % of project grade
Final paper	Fri June 30 60% of project grade

Health behaviors

cigarette smoking (tobacco or e-cig)

drinking

smokeless tobacco use

caffeine intake

dietary fat intake

salt intake

fruit and vegetable intake

fiber intake

carbonated soda consumption

sugar intake

watching TV/sedentary behaviors

physical activity/exercise

sleep

stress management

adherence to medical advice/treatment

sunscreen use

flossing teeth/dental hygiene

hand washing

use of cell phones or texting while driving

use of helmets while riding bicycle, moped, etc.

*Note: More than one student may choose the same health behavior but students are expected to work INDEPENDENTLY on their projects. All literature searching, data collection, intervention, and writing must be done independently and reflect the student’s own thought processes. Failure to do so (e.g. sharing articles, data, etc.) constitutes a violation of the academic integrity policy and will result in a 0 for the project.