Background
The (UK) National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) identified a range of attributes for behaviour change practitioners. In this assignment, you are required to demonstrate:
- an awareness of behaviours that affect people, and benefits of prevention and management. This includes an ability to assess people’s needs and interpret relevant data on local or national needs and characteristics, and understand local policy and demographics
- an understanding of the factors that may affect behaviour including psychological, social, cultural and economic factors
- an ability to design interventions, recognise specific behaviour change techniques used in change interventions, and understand how an intervention works
Overview
- You will prepare a written proposal for an individual, organisational, or community behaviour change.
- Maximum length is 2800 words including citations and excluding the reference list.
- The assignment is marked out of 100 for 40% of the final marks.
- The assignment is due week 11: Monday 24.05.2021 16:00
- In the proposal you will
- identify a specific behaviour, which may be associated with a specific context and/or demographic
- appraise the significance/importance of this behaviour and the potential benefits of managing the behaviour
- examine the key multi-level (individual, social, environmental, societal/cultural) influences of the behaviour
- use the RE-AIM framework to formulate a behaviour change intervention and evaluation, describing the participants, targeted outcomes and related assessment, potential agencies for intervention uptake, implementation of behaviour change techniques, and likelihood of sustainability.
Content
You may choose your assignment topic based on your interests. The exception to this is that you may NOT choose exercise or sedentary behaviour as these are used as applied examples during the course. Section 1 Needs analysis
Identify the behaviour
- What is the specific behaviour? Remember a behaviour is an observable action, and this should be a volitational behaviour (i.e., within personal control).
- You could specify the behaviour for a specific demographic (e.g., Indigenous people, men, migrants, school aged children, health workers), context (e.g., workplaces, recreational settings), or issue (e.g., health condition). What is the rationale for this specification?
- Provide definitions where relevant e.g., If you focus on the behaviour among “young children”, what age range does that include? If your behaviour is physical activity, what does this encompass – do you focus on a specific type such as walking, cycling, or organised sports? Has the behaviour been defined by an authoritative source?
Why is this behaviour important/significant? What are the potential benefits of changing this behaviour?
- Why is this behaviour worthy of attention? This may relate to prevalence, consequences, social impact, economic impact, and/or societal impact.
- Has this behaviour been identified as a priority in key local, national or international documents or policies?
- What are the possible gains that could come from managing (increasing/decreasing/substituting) this behaviour? Consider potential benefits across a range of levels including individuals (e.g., health, wellbeing, performance), social relations (e.g., significant others), organisations (e.g., productivity) and communities (e.g., costs).
- Can these benefits be quantified in any way? i.e. the magnitude of financial savings or improvement on some other metric.
Section 2: Multi-level Influences on Behaviour
- Appraise the key factors that are associated with this behaviour. Remember such associations may be positive or negative.
- Consider potential behavioural, psychological, social, physical environment, financial environment, policy environment, societal, and cultural factors as influences
- This text should provide some basis for the targets of your intervention Section 3: Intervention and Evaluation (RE-AIM)
Discuss the Reach of the intervention
- Who does the intervention engage as participants? Note this may not necessarily be the ultimate end targets for change.
- How will these people be accessed and/or made aware of the intervention?
- Which group(s ) may be underserved and how could they be engaged?
- How can the representativeness of participants be assessed?
Describe how the Efficacy of the intervention can be evaluated.
- What is the primary outcome to be measured and how will this be assessed? The outcome must be a specific behaviour, and could reflect aspects of e.g., whether or not the behaviour is done, frequency, quality of behaviour etc. This outcome should be consistent with your intervention aim.
- What are the secondary outcomes and how will these be assessed? These need not be behaviours but should relate to the behaviour. This information could reflect your intervention function(s) and/or objectives (which in turn should reflect some of your influences).
- Are there any potential unintended consequences (behavioural or otherwise) of the intervention, and how could these be assessed?
- In describing the assessment, consider who will do the assessment and when (relative to the intervention). Note that you need not include the names of specific types of measures. Instead, provide a broad description of the type of assessment e.g., self report questionnaires, databases, objective indicators, stakeholder interviews, organisational records, local databases.
Appraise where this intervention could be Adopted
- Identify at least one agency/setting for intervention adoption. What is your justification for this adoption agency/setting? It may be e.g., that this setting provides convenient access to the intended participants or is where the behaviour occurs.
- What is the potential appeal of the intervention to this adoption agency/setting?
- What are the potential challenges of the intervention to this adoption agency/setting? Describe what is involved with the Implementation of the intervention.
- What are the aim and objectives of the intervention? The aim should have a behavioural focus and include the nature of the change. The objectives need not be behavioural.
- What is the intervention function(s)?
- What specific behaviour change techniques will be used? This should include terms used in the Behaviour Change Taxonomy.
- How are these techniques delivered, and with what duration and frequency? What is the mode of action? (e.g., groups, face to face, individual, social/print media, online).
- What are the necessary resources for implementing the intervention? Think about personnel, venue, materials, equipment, costs, time etc.
Appraise the Maintenance of the intervention at both the individual and organisational level.
- What is likely to happen with any behaviour change among participants after the intervention? E.g., are participant improvements likely to continue or decay over time? What is the likelihood of relapse? What kind of time frames are involved with these estimates?
- How will the long-term impact of the intervention for participants be assessed? Note that you need not include the names of specific types of measures. Instead, provide a broad description of the type of assessment e.g., self report questionnaires, databases, objective indicators, stakeholder interviews, performance records. You should also refer to assessment timing.
- How easy/difficult is it for the adoption agency/setting to continue to use the intervention in the long term? What is the rationale for that?
Evidence and Resources
Your proposal should include citations as supporting evidence. Highlight salient evidence such as Australian data or research which is consistent with your specified demographic/context.
Sources of evidence may include empirical research, local, national or international reports/documents from authoritative sources such as government, professional bodies, and relevant organisations.
There is no recommended number of references. However, marks are awarded for quality of your analysis (including the use and synthesis of evidence). Avoid repeatedly using the same limited number of references throughout your analysis.
The learning activities in weeks 2 and 3 may help your examination of the multi-level influences. The RE-AIM Framework presented in week 4 must be used for your intervention proposal.
The Behaviour Change Taxonomy presented in Week 5 is a key resource for your intervention implementation section. The learning activities in weeks 5-9 will include content that can inform your intervention formulation i.e., function, objectives, counselling, small groups, population-level approaches.
Structure
The assignment should be presented in essay format. An abstract is not required. You may choose to use subheadings. Marks are awarded for flow, language, ease of discerning meaning, grammar, spelling, punctuation and referencing.
The word limit across sections should be distributed so that those sections with the highest marks have the most words.
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