Behavior Change Project

Behavior Change Project (BCP) Instructions

BCP Step 4 – Act and Keep a 3 Week Journal of Attempted Change/Improvement

Now that you have researched and developed a personalized plan to effectively change your behavior for your BCP, you are going to implement your plan. You will implement your plan to change your behavior for 3 weeks. During these 3 weeks, you will record your behavior.

Objective:

You will take action and keep a 3-week journal that records your change behavior attempt and collects data that you will use to assess the successfulness of your behavior change plan.

Points Possible:

30

Steps:

1. Record your behavior change for at least 3 weeks. For your three-week record, you simply need to record the behavior you are actively trying to improve/change and the quantity for that behavior. If you do not do the behavior on a day or days, you still need to have an entry for EVERY DAY; simply record the quantity as zero or none. Ideally, the quantity that you record for this part of the project is the same measurement that you considered under the ABC section earlier in the project. Be specific here – what exactly are you recording?? Quantity of servings of fruit? # of soda cans consumed? Minutes and type of physical activity? Or what?

Look at PAGE 3 below to see what the ABC’s are.

2. At the end of each of the three weeks, write a short summary about what worked and what didn’t work for you that week. If your plan didn’t work, what will you do differently the next week to make progress towards your SMART goal?? SMART definition here.

3. You will turn in your BCP Step 4 Journal in a Word document format (later along with BCP Step 5). To receive full credit, you need to have an entry for at least 21 days (even for days you do not do the behavior), and you will need to include 3 weekly summaries.

4. Hold on to your BCP Step 4 Journal until you complete BCP Step 5. You will submit Steps 4 & 5 together.

5. At this point in the project you will “check-in” with your assigned BCP Buddies to share how your change attempts are going and offer any advice or suggestions to help support them towards reaching their objective.

BCP Step 5 – Reflect Back on Your Change/Improvement Journey

Objective:

After completing this final step of the project, you will have analyzed your process and outcomes of changing your behavior.

Points Possible:

70 (+30 points for BCP Step 4 for a total of 100 points for this assignment upload)

Steps:

Answer ALL of the following in regard to changing your behavior:

1. Describe the experience of practicing your behavior change plan.

2. Summarize the frequency of your behavior. Use the ABC concept and quantities discussed earlier and recorded in your 3-week Journal to compare any changes in your behavior. I am asking you to compare your behavior from before you started this project, throughout your project to now. Is there is difference in the quantity related to your behavior?

Look at PAGE 3 below to see what the ABC’s are

3. Explain if you reached the objective you stated in your behavior change plan.

4. Describe if you were successful in changing your behavior.

5. Explain difficulties you experienced in your change journey.

6. Describe what you learned about how to change a health behavior.

7. Describe the use of changing antecedents of the behavior.

8. Describe the use of changing consequences of the behavior.

9. Assess what you would do differently if you were to complete the behavior change process again.

10. Reflect upon the Transtheoretical Model/Process of Change. Explain the stage you currently are in and if completing the project influenced movement between stages.

11. Explain if the project was worthwhile and why or why not.

12. Has this project and your change journey increased your sense of personal health responsibility? Rate your own attitude towards your personal self-responsibility on a scale of 0-4.

0= no self-efficacy or internal control of my health actions.

1= little self-efficacy or feeling of internal control over my health actions.

2= some self-efficacy and feelings of internal control over my health actions.

3= moderate amount of self-efficacy and feelings of internal control over my health actions.

4= significant self-efficacy and feel empowered to take control over my health actions.

You will submit your BCP Step 4 Journal AND your BCP Step 5 Reflection by uploading them into online as ONE Word Document.

PAGE 3

Here is the explanation for why each of the ABCs is important:

A is for antecedents. Antecedents might be a word you don’t often use or hear, but it refers to a preceding event or condition. Antecedents to a behavior might be who we are with, a commercial we see, a comment someone else makes, a thought we have, or a biological response of our body. An antecedent act like a cue or trigger, influencing us to act a certain way. People have different antecedents for different behaviors at different times in their lives. Recognizing antecedents to our health behaviors is important because then we can develop strategies to change or avoid antecedents to make our behavior change easier. Let’s use an example of a person who wants to quit smoking. This person smokes regularly with other people on her break at work. She realizes that going on her break with other people who are smoking is an antecedent to her current behavior. So in her plan to quit smoking, she makes other plans for her break. She finds a partner to walk with on her break instead of spending her break where she used to smoke. She has actively changed an antecedent to her behavior.

B is for behavior. This is the behavior you are concerned about or the behavior you are doing instead of the healthier behavior. For example, a person who wants to increase his level of physical activity has planned to work out after school. However instead of going to the gym to workout he goes home and watches television. For his behavior record, he needs to record the behavior of watching television because that is his activity instead of the behavior he wants to be doing (going to the gym to exercise) for his behavior change project.

C is for consequences. Consequences are what occur after the behavior. Consequences are important to examine because consequences can be reinforcers to our behaviors. A reinforcer is a consequence that strengthens a behavior, or in others words, increases the likelihood of a person performing the behavior in the future. Going back to our example of a person wanting to increase his level of physical activity but who instead watches television, the consequences of watching television instead of going to the gym could be that he enjoys his evening and is able to watch his favorite shows. Or say he does go to the gym to workout. Afterwards, he feels energized and stronger. These positive feelings are consequences that could make him more likely to continue working out in the future. Sometimes we think of consequences in terms of punishment. Punishment is another form of consequences. Punishment decreases the likelihood a person will perform the behavior in the future. Try to focus on the reinforcers of your desired behavior rather than the punishments of your undesired behavior.