health behaviour

The Editors

Overview

• Where professionals once might have seen their roles as working at a particular level of intervention (such as changing organizational or individual health behaviors) or employing a specific type of behavior change strategy (such as group interventions or individual counseling), we now realize that multiple interventions at multiple levels are often needed to initiate and sustain behavior change effectively.
• And where health education and behavior change professionals once might have relied on intuition, experience, and their knowledge of the literature, increasingly we expect professionals to act on the basis of evidence.
• A premise of Health Behavior and Health Education is that a dynamic exchange among theory, research, and practice is most likely to produce effective health education.
• The editors believe fundamentally that theory and practice should coexist in a healthy dialectic, not as dichotomies. The best theory is likely to be grounded in lessons from practice. The best practice should be grounded in theory.

Broad Definitions

Health Education:

Includes instructional activities and other strategies to change individual health behavior, as well as organizational efforts, policy directives, economic supports, environmental activities, mass media, and community-level programs.

Health Behavior:

Settings & Audiences for Health Education

Seven major settings are particularly relevant to contemporary health education:

1. Schools
2. Communities
3. Worksites
4. Health care settings
5. Homes
6. The consumer marketplace
7. The communications environment

• For health education to be effective, it should be designed with an understanding of recipients, target audiences, health and social characteristics, beliefs, attitudes, values, skills, and past behaviors.
• These audiences consist of people who may be reached as individuals, in groups, through organizations, as communities or sociopolitical entities, or through some combination of these.
• They may be health professionals, clients, people at risk for disease, or patients.
• There are four dimensions along which the potential audiences can be characterized:
  1. sociodemographic characteristics
  2. ethnic or racial background
  3. life cycle stage
  4. disease or at-risk status

Interrelationships between Theory, Research, and Practice

• Theory, research, and practice are a continuum along which the skilled professional should move with ease.
• Not only are they related, but they are each essential to health education and health behavior.
• Theory and research should not be solely the province of academics, just as practice is not solely the concern of practitioners.
• The best theory is informed by practice; the best practice should be grounded in theory.
• There is a tension between them that one must navigate continually, but they are not in opposition. Theory and practice enrich one another by their dynamic interaction.
• The authors of Health Behavior and Health Education examine theories in light of their applicability. By including an explanation of theories and their application in each chapter, their intention is to break down the dichotomy between theory and practice.
• Relationships among theory, research, and practice are not simple or linear.
• The larger picture of health improvement and disease reduction is better described as a cycle of interacting types of endeavors, including fundamental research (research into determinants, as well as development of methodologies), intervention research (research aimed toward change), surveillance research (tracking population-wide trends, including maintenance of change), and application and program delivery.

What is Theory?

• A theory is a set of interrelated concepts, definitions, and propositions that present a systematic view of events or situations by specifying relations among variables, in order to explain and predict the events or situations.
• The notion of generality, or broad application, is important, as is testability. Theories are by their nature abstract; that is, they do not have a specified content or topic area. Theories and models explain behavior and suggest ways to achieve behavior change.
• An explanatory theory (often called a theory of the problem) helps describe and identify why a problem exists. Such theories also predict behaviors under defined conditions and guide the search for modifiable factors like knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, social support, and lack of resource.

Interrelationships between Theory, Research, and Practice

• Theory, research, and practice are a continuum along which the skilled professional should move with ease.
• Not only are they related, but they are each essential to health education and health behavior.
• Theory and research should not be solely the province of academics, just as practice is not solely the concern of practitioners.
• The best theory is informed by practice; the best practice should be grounded in theory.
• There is a tension between them that one must navigate continually, but they are not in opposition. Theory and practice enrich one another by their dynamic interaction.
• The authors of Health Behavior and Health Education examine theories in light of their applicability. By including an explanation of theories and their application in each chapter, their intention is to break down the dichotomy between theory and practice.
• Relationships among theory, research, and practice are not simple or linear.
• The larger picture of health improvement and disease reduction is better described as a cycle of interacting types of endeavors, including fundamental research (research into determinants, as well as development of methodologies), intervention research (research aimed toward change), surveillance research (tracking population-wide trends, including maintenance of change), and application and program delivery.

What is Theory?

• A theory is a set of interrelated concepts, definitions, and propositions that present a systematic view of events or situations by specifying relations among variables, in order to explain and predict the events or situations.
• The notion of generality, or broad application, is important, as is testability. Theories are by their nature abstract; that is, they do not have a specified content or topic area. Theories and models explain behavior and suggest ways to achieve behavior change.
• An explanatory theory (often called a theory of the problem) helps describe and identify why a problem exists. Such theories also predict behaviors under defined conditions and guide the search for modifiable factors like knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, social support, and lack of resources.
• Change theories, or theories of action, guide the development of interventions. They also form the basis for evaluation, pushing the evaluator to make explicit her or his assumptions about how a program should work..

Interrelationships between Theory, Research, and Practice

• Theory, research, and practice are a continuum along which the skilled professional should move with ease.
• Not only are they related, but they are each essential to health education and health behavior.
• Theory and research should not be solely the province of academics, just as practice is not solely the concern of practitioners.
• The best theory is informed by practice; the best practice should be grounded in theory.
• There is a tension between them that one must navigate continually, but they are not in opposition. Theory and practice enrich one another by their dynamic interaction.
• The authors of Health Behavior and Health Education examine theories in light of their applicability. By including an explanation of theories and their application in each chapter, their intention is to break down the dichotomy between theory and practice.
• Relationships among theory, research, and practice are not simple or linear.
• The larger picture of health improvement and disease reduction is better described as a cycle of interacting types of endeavors, including fundamental research (research into determinants, as well  suas development of methodologies), intervention research (research aimed toward change),rveillance research (tracking population-wide trends, including maintenance of change), and application and program delivery.

What is Theory?

• A theory is a set of interrelated concepts, definitions, and propositions that present a systematic view of events or situations by specifying relations among variables, in order to explain and predict the events or situations.
• The notion of generality, or broad application, is important, as is testability. Theories are by their nature abstract; that is, they do not have a specified content or topic area. Theories and models explain behavior and suggest ways to achieve behavior change.
• An explanatory theory (often called a theory of the problem) helps describe and identify why a problem exists. Such theories also predict behaviors under defined conditions and guide the search for modifiable factors like knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, social support, and lack of resources.
• Change theories, or theories of action, guide the development of interventions. They also form the basis for evaluation, pushing the evaluator to make explicit her or his assumptions about how a program should work.