behavior change: Managing stress . READ THE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

Assignment size:

10 pages / 2750 words (Double spacing)

Education level:

Master’s

English (US)

Assignment topic:

behavior change: Managing stress

Subject:

Other health education

Citation Style:

APA 6th edition

Instructions

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to learn how to identify a problematic health behavior, to develop a behavioral intervention to modify this behavior, and to evaluate its effectiveness. By doing this assignment, you will be doing something to help yourself as well as learning how to develop a behavior change intervention.

Description of the assignment:

• You will develop a personal behavior change plan, implement it, and then write a progress report.
• You can focus on any health-related issue (including emotional health) that is of interest to you. You may choose to focus on yourself and a health behavior that affects you personally or you may do this assignment on someone else.
• You must incorporate at least two behavior change theories in your plan.
• The complete assignment must be 7-10 pages long excluding cover page, appendix etc, and be double-spaced, with Times New Roman, 12pt font only. Feel free to write more but remember it is quality that counts, not quantity. Please choose your words carefully and thoughtfully and consider each paper as an opportunity to improve your writing skills.
• No large gaps between paragraphs. Each paragraph should be joined to the next paragraph. Begin each paragraph by indenting it 0.3″.
• Make sure you number your pages.
• Above you will see that I have attached several sample papers from students who took this course before. These sample papers should give you a good sense of how to do this assignment and what you need to do if you are striving for excellence.

Instructions:

• Complete any health assessments. There are tons on the web. Discuss what you have learned from doing these assessments.
• Based on the information obtained from these assessments as well as your self-awareness project, identify the behavior/s you wish to target for change, reasons for wanting to change or establish these behaviors, motivation level or readiness to change, and factors that you believe are responsible for the behavior that you wish to change.
• Write a specific goal for the target behavior. You can have more than one goal but I would not recommend more than two. Knowing how to write a goal is extremely important. Above you will see an attached file called “How to set goals”. It shows how to write a goal based on a person’s stage of readiness to change a behavior
• Select an observation procedure that is appropriate for the behavior you have chosen to change. Include forms on which the data will be recorded. Choose a recording strategy that is convenient to use.
• Record baseline data for two weeks.
• Once this is done, design an intervention. In other words, develop an appropriate behavior change procedure for a two week period. Select an intervention that is tied to a review of the research literature and is tailored to what you hope to accomplish. Identify some possible reinforcers that you might use to modify the behavior of interest. Specify when data will be collected, and when consequences will be delivered. Include one or two alternative strategies for changing the behavior in case the one you initially implement does not work. This section is the most important piece of the assignment as it will reflect your understanding of behavior change theories and your ability to apply them in practice.
• Record data for two weeks post-intervention.
• Finally, assess the overall effectiveness of the intervention.
• Note: You will not be graded on your success at changing your behavior. Rather, you will be graded on how well you design your intervention, track your behavior (as well as your reflections) and present your results in your paper.

Things to remember:

• Your final report must contain information on all the steps above.
• Make sure you follow the APA format.
• Every semester, a couple of students will submit this assignment and it will be obvious they completed the assignment at the last minute and just made up data. In other words, they did not observe their behavior for two weeks, do an intervention, and then observe their behavior for the next two weeks. I will know if you are fudging this assignment. You will be doing yourself a disservice (not me) if you choose to go down this path. This assignment is meant to provide you with an opportunity to change something about yourself and thus improve your quality of life. Please take advantage of this opportunity!
• Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will result in a zero grade. Please click on the ACADEMIC RESOURCES button on the left for information and policies about plagiarism.
• This report should not just consist of pages of logs, menus, or other lists of daily activities- that belongs in the appendix section of your report.
• Every semester, most students choose weight loss (diet or exercise) as their target behavior. I would like to see students expand their horizons and identify other areas of one’s life that could be enhanced and it does not just have to be physical health. Remember, health is not just physical – it is also emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual and environmental. In health education, often we tend to emphasis physical health over the other dimensions of health. This is something I want you to consider when doing this assignment.
• To learn more about your personal health status and risk and to help you identify a personal health problem/issue to work on, you can visit any of the websites below:

http://www.realage.com/

http://www.menshealth.org/code/selfcare.html

http://www.health.state.nd.us/ndhd/quiz.htm

• Feel free to locate other websites and assessment tools that can help you with this assignment.
• Please make sure you read the grading rubric that is attached before you submit your assignment. It is intended to help you identify which areas of your assignment are good and which areas are weak. You can see how well you have completed this assignment before you submit your work. I want you to get into the habit of assessing your own performance before you submit your work rather than waiting for someone else to give you a grade and feedback. When you finally get your grade and feedback, there should be no surprises.
• Above you will see that I have attached several sample papers from students who took this course before. These papers are extremely thorough and well written. These sample papers should give you a good sense of how to do this assignment and what you need to do if you are striving for excellence.
• Write your report in a Microsoft Word file only (no other types of files or pdfs) and save your file as “(Your last name)ProfessionalPracticeProject”. For example: SmithProfessionalPracticeProject.