New York University College Students Communication Campaign Plan Discussion

Conduct a behavioral analysis of the behavior you proposed to intervene in based on the preparatory work you completed for your topic proposal and choose the target audience for your health communication campaign.

Individual Project Assignment
Health Communication Campaign Plan
Behavioral and Audience Analysis
Deadline:
See syllabus.
Length:
No more than five (5) double-spaced pages of text (not including the title page and
bibliography).
Format:
The paper must be typewritten, double-spaced, with margins of 1 inch on all sides.
Use a Times New Roman 12-point font. Your name and Student ID number should
appear at the top left corner of each page (you can use the page header for this). All
pages should be appropriately numbered. Use headings and sub-headings as
appropriate. Cite your sources in-text and list them in the bibliography following
APA Style (6th edition) guidelines. All papers must comply with the University’s
academic integrity standards.
Submission: Upload paper (MS Word or PDF document only) to Canvas by the
deadline noted above. Students will NOT be able to upload documents to Canvas
once the deadline has passed (so please plan ahead). In the event that you
experience a technical problem with uploading your paper, please contact the Canvas
24/7 Help Desk AND email a copy of the file to the instructor BEFORE
the deadline. Papers submitted late will have points deducted for each day late.
Failure to submit a completed paper within three (3) days of the deadline will result
in a grade of zero points for this paper.
Sources:
The paper will include a minimum of (5) peer-reviewed journal articles (these should
be different from the articles previously referenced in the topic proposal) that are
directly relevant to your behavioral analysis and intervention plan. The research
sources (including online sources) are to be cited “in-text” in the body of the paper
and listed in the References section following APA Style guidelines-6th edition. Refer
to the suggested online and library resources below.
Grading:
Papers will be graded based on the Health Communication Campaign Plan Rubric,
which can be found in the online course. This paper counts toward 20% of the final
grade in this course.
Assignment Description
For this assignment you will conduct a behavioral analysis of the behavior you proposed to
intervene in based on the preparatory work you completed for your topic proposal and choose the
target audience for your health communication campaign.
Behavioral Analysis
The primary goal of the behavioral analysis is to form an understanding of the factors that will cause
people to perform the behavior you recommend for them. Some of these factors may be internal to
the individual (e.g., the extent to which a person possesses the knowledge, skills, beliefs and
motivation to perform the behavior); others may be external (e.g., the presence of absence of social
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pressure or external incentives for performing the behavior). Your task is to sort out the relative
importance of these factors in influencing the behavior and to identify the most salient (or
important) factor that will be the focus of your communication strategy (which you will develop in
the next paper). To this end, you will examine the existing scientific literature on this topic for clues
about which factors (internal and/or external) appear to be the most important determinates of the
behavior. Specifically, you should look for salient cognitions (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, perceptions,
and/or feelings) that have been shown to be associated with the behavior since, unlike objective
conditions over which people have no control, cognitions can be altered through strategic
communication alone. You will next compare the ability of two or more behavior change theories to
provide a good (logical, evidence-based) template for changing this behavior based on the insights
gained from the literature. The outcomes of your behavioral analysis should be a clear set of
recommendations, or strategic communication objectives, regarding the focus of your
communication strategy. For example, you may determine that people at-risk for skin cancer do not
properly protect themselves against sun exposure because (a) they do not believe that they are
personally susceptible to skin cancer, (b) they have positive (but false) expectations of rewards from
sun exposure, or simply because (c) they are misinformed or confused about the level of protection
provided by commercially available products. Accordingly, your intervention’s communication
strategy will target these perceptions under the assumption that changing these will cause people to
change their behavior.
Target Audience
Once you have a sense of what needs to change (that is, the specific cognitive elements you will try
to influence through your intervention), you need to determine who needs to change. In most cases,
your primary target audience will be the group of individuals who are at-risk for the disease or
condition you are attempting to prevent. Depending on the population’s exposure to a particular
risk, your primary target audience may be composed of all members (as is the case with flu
prevention) or a distinct group of members (such as women, in the context of breast cancer
prevention). Your communication strategy will focus on changing salient cognitions among
members of this group. However, there are instances in which you may want to target a secondary
target audience, or a group of people that can influence or otherwise enable the behavior you are
promoting to your primary target audience. Consider the case of children and parents. Since children
are dependent on their parents, we frequently believe that asking parents to influence their children
to change their behavior (such as applying sunscreen) or to enable their children to change their
behavior (for example, buying sunscreens designed for children) will be more effective than trying to
influence the behavior of children directly. In these cases, your communication strategy may more
productively focus on the behavior of your secondary target audience, either exclusively or as a
supplement to your efforts to target and influence your primary audience.
Researching Your Topic
This is a research-intensive paper that requires you in addition to apply theories of behavior change
to the analysis of the behavior you chose to promote. There are two specific pieces of information
that you need to obtain from the scientific literature to complete this assignment well. The first is
information about effective interventions, that is, programs or strategies that demonstrate evidence of
success in changing the preventive health behavior you chose to promote (e.g., interventions that
were successful in increasing sunscreen use by children). There is a good chance that such
information will be summarized in a review article, so look for these in particular when you search
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Individual Project Assignment
Health Communication Campaign Plan
the literature. The second piece of relevant information you should be searching for in the literature
is about communication-based interventions, such as mass media campaigns or interpersonal
communication interventions. This way your own plan can be better informed by considering the
relative strengths and weakness of (or the challenges encountered by) past and present
communication interventions that are designed to influence the behavior you chose to focus on.
Suggested Organization of Your Paper
I.
Title of Project (this is can be the same or a modified version of the title you used in Stage
1).
II.
Behavioral Analysis
• What preventive health behavior will you target? What evidence can you provide that
this behavior is important in the context of the disease/condition you chose for your
topic? (NOTE: this should be the same as the behavior you identified as a promising
target for intervention at the conclusion of your topic proposal paper).
• What behavior change theories (e.g., theory of reasoned action, theory of planned
behavior, health belief model, social cognitive theory, the transtheoretical model, or the
precaution process adoption model) have been applied to the explanation or promotion
of this behavior?
• What are some of the common reasons cited in the literature for why individuals may or
may not enact this behavior (e.g., lack of motivation, perceived barriers, etc.)? Which of
these are potentially modifiable through communication (i.e., salient cognitions such as
perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, or feelings)? Which salient cognition do you propose to
“go after” and why?
• Which behavior change theory appears to provide the best template for changing the
salient cognition you identified as a potential target for intervention? Explain why.
• What other behavior change theory may be useful for enhancing our understanding of
how behavior change may occur in this case? Explain what additional contributions it
can make to your behavior change plan.
III.
Target Audience
• Who is the most logical primary target audience for the intervention? Explain why.
• What do you know about this target audience (i.e., audience characteristics such as
predispositions, interests, preferences, etc.) that can help guide your campaign strategy?
• Can you think of a secondary target audience that may be helpful in promoting the
desired change in behavior to your primary target audience? If so, in what way do you
anticipate this group to be helpful to your intervention?
IV.
Conclusion
• Clearly state your communication objectives as derived from your behavioral analysis
(e.g., to change the behavior in the desired manner, I will need to develop a strategic
communication plan that will….. e.g., instill a certain belief, enhance perceived selfefficacy to take a specific action, remove a specific perceived barrier to recommended
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Individual Project Assignment
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•
V.
action, and/or increase perceived threat associated with the health risk you are trying to
minimize).
Reflect critically on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the theory you chose to
guide your behavior change strategy. If applicable, make suggestions about elements or
constructs from other behavior change theories that may further inform your behavioral
analysis.
Bibliography (APA style)
• List a minimum of 5 peer-reviewed journal articles that are directly relevant to your
behavioral analysis (make sure to cite these sources in the text). These should be
different than the sources you use in the preparation of your topic selection proposal.
• If applicable, list all other online sources you used and make sure that they are properly
cited in the relevant places in the text).
Library and Online Resources
•
The websites of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (http://health.nih.gov/) and the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) http://www.cdc.gov/) are the best resource
for listings of public health problems (diseases/conditions) and for basic information about each
problem.
•
For guidance about finding peer-reviewed journal articles about health topics, please refer to the
RU Libraries’ Medical and Health Sciences Research Guide
(http://libguides.rutgers.edu/medicine). MEDLINE and PubMed are excellent databases to
search for relevant articles published in the field of medicine and public health. Academic
Search Premier is a better choice for work published in the field of health communication.
Review articles about public health topics are published in the Annual Review of Public Health
(search the Annual Reviews database) as well as in The Cochrane Library database.
•
Two comprehensive online resources that take you step-by-step through the process of
developing health communication interventions are The Health Communication Unit
(http://www.thcu.ca/) and CDCynergy (use the Health Communication Web Version)
(http://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/CDCynergy/). Phase 2 in CDCynergy is a useful
resource for this particular assignment.
•
For help with APA style formatting, please refer to the RU Library APA Style Research Guide
(http://libguides.rutgers.edu/learningapa).
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