Changing Health Behaviour

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Changing behaviour of individuals requires a detailed understanding of the determinants and mechanisms that drive behavior. However, although understanding determinants of behaviour provides insight into what to change, it does not tell you how to change these determinants. Being able to change behaviour requires knowledge and understanding of the theoretical methods and practical applications that can be used to modify the most important individual and environmental level determinants. 

In this module, a variety of theory-based behavior change methods are introduced. These methods can be used to influence the most important behavioral determinants, as identified in a parallel course, such as people’s perceived risk, attitudes and self-efficacy towards health behavior, or environmental influences on behavior. Furthermore, students learn under which conditions these methods may work and how to translate these methods into practical applications to be used in health promotion interventions.  ‘Mini-lectures’ about these methods will be prepared and presented by small groups of students and supervised by teachers. By presenting one’s work and providing and receiving feedback from peers and tutors, students will have a very active role in the learning activities. In addition to the mini-lectures there will also be summary lectures by teachers. 

The concurrent training aims at applying the knowledge of theory-based methods to the development of health messages for different media, for different settings and for different target audiences. Students will learn about theory-based principles for developing attractive, comprehensible, persuasive and culturally appropriate health messages through hands on exercises. Assessment in this module consists of a module exam and a written group assignment about the training.