Talk:Behavior change (public health)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2019 and 10 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ffrau8110.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Msmattso30.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:31, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Student assignment to improve this article ?
This would be such a good topic for a student assignment. Any takers out there...? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sanitation#Student_assignments EvM-Susana (talk) 22:50, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Hey User:EvM-Susana, I gotcha (Efuhrm (talk) 22:33, 5 December 2016 (UTC))

Clean-up proposal
In addition to references, I think this page need major reorganisation and clean-up.

As a start, I suggest making the introduction much shorter and tighter (with a lot more references) and then expanding the main part of the article to include specific examples of how behavior change is considered in different public health spheres.

As part of WikiProject Sanitation my main focus will be on adding information about sanitation behavior change, but I think there is a lot of scope to add details of similar things for other named things - smoking, AIDS etc.

Interested to hear any thoughts on this JMWt (talk) 09:19, 25 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree with your suggestions. The lead is not written like a summary at this stage - it should be a summary of the main points of the article. And I have just added CLTS as an example; should probably add a reference for it, not just the link to the CLTS article. EvM-Susana (talk) 22:26, 2 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I also agree. As a first step, would it be ok to delete the Criticism section? That section is has no references and doesn't seem relevant. Tjmather (talk) 11:43, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Good point. I would say go ahead and delete it. It reads like someone's opinion piece. I tried to work out when it was added and by whom, but didn't find the edit in the history. It is completely unsourced, so let's delete it. EvM-Susana (talk) 14:59, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * JMWt, I know of several examples of behavior change programs that have published evaluations. For child health, Development Media International's RCT in Burkina Faso. For family planning, JHU-CCP's NURHI program in Nigeria. For AIDs, Young 1ove's "sugar daddy" awareness class in Botswana. I'd be happy to list of all those with links to pages with more details. Tjmather (talk) 17:08, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your work on this article Tjmather, thanks. When you add the examples, it's really important to not just hyperlink to another Wikipedia page but to add actual reputable references as well. Can you provide some and cite them? Thanks. EvM-Susana (talk) 21:17, 21 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Sure, no problem. I will try to add the references this weekend Tjmather (talk) 19:21, 2 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Tjmather, but could you make the citations more accurate by filling more of the fields of the citation template (website)? Like Publisher, Date accessed, Date published (if known), Title etc. If unsure, perhaps this link will help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sanitation#How_to_add_citations_or_references EvM-Susana (talk) 20:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Why the name change to "behavioral change"?
I have always seen it as "behavior change" and the article is also calling it behavior change in the body of the text. Was it really necessary to change the title of the page to "behavioral change"? Just wondering about the reasoning.EvM-Susana (talk) 20:09, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Behavioral is the proper adjective. There is already a behavioural change theories article so I thought this would harmonize them. I'm not adverse to having it moved back, but the sentence "Behavior change has become a central objective of public health interventions" is grammatically wrong. (Why I never bother changing that is a very good question.) -- CFCF  🍌 (email) 21:56, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I am not a native English speaker, but I thought it's simply a two word noun, like "urine diversion". Also, putting the two options in Google gives 5 times more hits for "behavior change" than for "behavioral change". So it seems to me that most of the literature and websites etc. use "behavior change", not "behavioral change" (might well be the impact of non-English native speakers but that's what happens with the English language sometimes).EvM-Susana (talk) 22:38, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm going to agree with you that it should be moved back to the original title, I'll try to fix the grammar in the article. -- CFCF  🍌 (email) 22:45, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Removed see also links
These links were under see also, but they are actually references that should rather be cited in the article itself in the right places:


 * Private Sector Partnerships USAID project focused on increasing the private sector's role in providing high-quality health products and services in developing countries.
 * Sara Del Valle: Effects of Behavioral Changes in a Smallpox Attack Model An article demonstrating the impact of behavioral changes on disease spread.
 * Research on the psychology of online behavior change campaigns: Online Interventions for Social Marketing Health Behavior Change Campaigns
 * Barrier Analysis resources: Barrier Analysis website, Barrier Analysis narrated presentation, Barrier Analysis Facilitator Manual
 * Designing for Behavior Change Curriculum was developed by the CORE Group Social and Behavior Change Working Group
 * Delivering on Your Good Intentions: The Foundations of Habit-Based Behavioral Change - a 2013 paper looking at how habits affect behavior change efforts. Paper was developed for 2Morrow, Inc and focuses on Health & Wellness. EvM-Susana (talk) 21:06, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Useful new references to cite
This looks like a pertinent article which could be cited (I just haven't yet found the time to do so, but don't want this to be lost). "Behaviour Centred Design: towards an applied science of behaviour change" http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17437199.2016.1219673 EvMsmile (talk) 00:07, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * And here's another very practical one from WaterAid in Oct 2017: https://sanitationupdates.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/wateraid-mass-behaviour-change-campaigns-what-works-and-what-doesnt/ EMsmile (talk) 20:21, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Missing references
Thanks to the student and his/her mentor for adding content to this article, User:Shalor (Wiki Ed), User:Msmattso30! Could you please still add at least one key reference for each of the theories that you have listed/linked (even if they are available in the wiki-linked article). Also, this section is odd to me and also doesn't have a reference: List of behavior change strategies. Does it really make sense to list this long bullet point here? Seems like a "how to" list. - Aug 2017, User:EMsmile

Behavioral interventions concepts
I wonder if behavioral interventions concepts would be relevant to this idea of behavior change in public health? You have all the theories learned there and the concepts of Applied Behavior Analysis as well as the functions of behavior and ways to ethically change behavior that could all play a role in behavior change for public health. Maria Maratos (talk) 05:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, they would be relevant (check if sub-articles on those topics already exist; if so, link to those). EMsmile (talk) 09:13, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Proposed improvements
I was going to work on this article but now don't have time in the near future. So I am putting here my notes which show my comments or suggested improvements:
 * Too many bullet point lists, some of them without references;
 * no images, missing a lot of content; it's just a Start article really.
 * Need to dig up recent references and work from them.
 * Also check how well it syncs with other related articles. EMsmile (talk) 10:52, 18 May 2022 (UTC)