Health Behavior Change Research Paper

Tracy Fried-Arneson
Health Behavior Change
2-19-18

Health Behavior Change

Proposed Plan

The health behavior that I chose to change was improving my dental hygiene by brushing my teeth more often. Specifically, brushing and flossing every morning and every night every single day. My plan was to reward myself with Cold Stone at the end of each week that I successfully brushed and flossed morning and night. Before starting my experiment, I researched the benefits of brushing daily and the consequences of not brushing. I found much information that I already knew and some that I did not. I also researched my proposed method of how I planned to change my behavior which was operant conditioning. I found there are many benefits to brushing

I found the most common ways to change a health behavior are derived from the health belief model, theory of reasoned action, transtheoretical model, and social cognitive theory (Coleman & Pasternak, 2012). I didn’t think any of these models would work very well for me because they are built the specific person’s perception of the consequences on not engaging in a health behavior, and their attitude towards the new behavior. In my case, I have a negative attitude towards brushing my teeth at night because I think it’s a nuisance, and I know there can be serious consequences but it’s not like I never brush so brushing once a day should be good enough. For this reason, I decided to use operant conditioning because I know that rewards are good motivation, and that’s exactly what I need. Operant conditioning means that behaviors can be increased or decreased based on their consequences, therefor a reward can increase the frequency of a desired behavior, in this case toothbrushing (Sanderson, 2013). In my case I wanted to a short-term reward, so I decided I would reward myself at the end of each successful week. With my gathered information and knew knowledge, I began trying to change my health

I did meet my set behavior change goal the second week. Honestly, I’m not sure if it was the ice cream reward that kept me motivated, I think it was the support provided by my boyfriend that got me successfully though the second week. If I were to do it differently I would pick a better reward, or make the reward after a shorter period of time. It was hard to keep motivated when the reward seemed to always be multiple days away. I don’t think there were any limitations to the program, I had all the materials and resources that I needed to be able to successfully change my behavior. I would like to add that ice cream was a poor choice of reward because I learned food rewards can increase the chances of becoming overweight, and its something that I normally have at my house, so it was easy to tell myself that I can still eat my own ice cream even if I fail. My overall reaction is that changing your behavior has to be something that you really want to do. If it’s something that you don’t really care about or take seriously, its very difficult to stay committed. I found this project to be enlightening, we talk about behavior change a lot and it seems straight forward, but you don’t realize how difficult it can be until you try it yourself. I was very close to just giving it up many times, I had to remind myself often about the reward at the end of the week, the benefits