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Being a public health student, I wanted to get involved with the health community in Columbia, SC. I was informed about an opportunity to conduct research with Project FIT. Project FIT is a research study for African American adolescents and their families which introduces positive habits on how to get and stay healthy together. To be certified to help with the research, I had to complete a training program where I learned about social and behavioral research. In this training, I learned the proper research protocol, recruitment and retention techniques, the importance of informed consent and confidentiality, as well as participant safety, quality control, and research misconduct. After receiving my certificate of completion, I began my work with the Project FIT families.
My volunteer work included going out to community events and recruiting members to participate in the study, running initial BMI testing to see if the member qualified for the study, and helping set up, run and break down the weekly lessons about healthy lifestyle habits we would teach the participants of the study. While conducting this research, I began to observe changes in participants’ behavior, especially when their habit changes would result in weight loss. This behavior change reminded me of a construct I learned about in my PSYC 101 class: positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is simply described as an added stimulus and an increase in behavior. When the participants added a stimulus such as healthy habits in the form of eating healthy snacks to their daily lives, their behavior was reinforced by their weight loss which motivated them to continue to practice their healthy habits. This continued practice of healthy habits is an example of positive reinforcement since the action of eating healthy snacks resulting in weight loss causes an increase in the behavior to eat healthy.
In my HPEB 300 class, we conducted a semester long project which resulted in a completed project proposal. My group decided to focus our project on changing the behavior of college students by getting more college students to receive the influenza vaccination. In order to get college students interested in getting vaccinated, we knew there would have to be a reward for their behavior. If we wanted people to increase their behavior, we had to present a pleasant stimulus that would encourage their behavior change. In our proposal, we suggested rewarding students with athletic points, a virtual point for attending sports event on campus, to help encourage and motivate them to receive a vaccination. The more athletic points a student has, the more rewards they can receive and the better their chance is for receiving a ticket for football games in the student section. The athletic point was the added stimulus to increase the behavior of receiving a vaccination. This is an example of positive reinforcement in action.
Pursuing a career in healthcare, I know that I will be faced with patient’s who may need to change their behavior, but are resistant at first. Knowing the effects of positive reinforcement, I can use this idea to initiate and maintain behavior change. I learned if you want to change people’s behavior, you need to give them a reason or a motivator to make the change.
CITI Training.pdfBTC: Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative Certification of Completion
BTC: Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative Certification of Completion
PPP Final Report (7).pdfWTC: HPEB 300 Final Project Proposal
WTC: HPEB 300 Final Project Proposal
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