SSDR: Behavior Change in the Developmental Process

SSRD Full Research Paper
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course
Instructor
Date
SSRD Full Research Paper
Behavior change is a part of a developmental process in which individuals have to alter their conduct to achieve better health outcomes. Healthcare is one area where patients are advised on several intervention measures, among which include behavior change to handle certain illness. Besides healthcare, the criminal department is another area where the main intervention is behavior change. However, unlike in the healthcare settings, where it is possible to assess the intervention outcome, there are limited studies on criminal behavior change assessment. This study focuses on using the ABC approach to assess the effectiveness of the model towards effecting behavior change.
Background
The patient for the study is a 25 year-old male who is struggling with drug addiction. The individual began using drugs as early as 16 year. He began with alcohol consumption and smoking but later transformed to using dangerous drugs. The continual usage has had a negative impact on his personal life as it has led to addiction, affected his relationship with his family and some friends, inability to work, poor hygiene, and has significantly lost weight. As a way to help the patient, this study seeks to utilize a multiple-treatment reversal design approach, which will involve administration of an intervention and an allowance for the evaluation of more than one treatment. In this technique, a baseline phase will be identified for the behavior change, which will be the dependent variable. This will be the present state of the individual before introduction of the intervention.
Once the patient attains a steady state, an intervention will be introduced, which will mark the beginning of phase B. This phase will be characterized by adjustments in the intervention to determine whether the variable of interest will worsen or become better. After introducing the behavior, the researcher will wait until a steady state is attained to be able to determine the extent to which the patient will have changed (Price et al., 2015). The researcher will monitor the change until the dependent variable attains a steady state. The researcher will then introduce a mild intervention to monitor the patient’s response, which will mark the commencement of the C phase of the study. The researcher will maintain the mild intervention until the dependent variable attains a steady state. Finally, the researcher will reintroduce each of the treatments in the reverse order as a way of controlling any carry over effects that may affect the behavior change process.
True motivation for change results from an individual’s desire to change, not for any rewards or outside gain, but for the sake of their own happiness and well-being. The Motivation to Change text highlights some of the things that can help motivate individuals with criminal behavior to change. Among them include staying out of jail, feeling successful, and having supportive friends and family. On the contrary, other things that hurt motivation include not having the necessary support, feeling like a failure, fear, doubt, and negative thinking. In this case, the patient has expressed his desire to avoid getting in trouble with the authorities and living a healthy and happy life. There are several studies on behavior change model and their effectiveness in achieving the desired behavior change. However, as Kwasnicka et al. (2016), the challenge is not always attaining the desired change in behavior, but maintaining the change. The ABC ACB design will help to not only change the behavior but also maintain it in helping the patient recover.
Literature Review
Behavior change interventions are the cheapest and one of the most effective approaches towards changing individual characters. Fergie et al. (2019) undertook a study to understand the type of behavior change mechanisms that could be utilized in curbing alcohol consumption and ensuring abstinence from illicit drug use by pregnant women. The researchers conducted a systematic review where they evaluated several sources concerning the different behavior change techniques. According to their findings, action planning, behavioral contract, prompts, self-talk, written content, feedback on behavior, social support, information concerning health consequences, behavior substitution, and goal setting behavior, among others, were useful approaches in helping reduce alcohol consumption. In this findings, the authors noted that social support was an effective intervention but failed to specify the type of social support needed.
Similarly, Garnett et al. (2019) conducted a research to assess the behavior change techniques used in digital behavior change interventions aimed at reducing excessive alcohol consumption. The researchers also utilized a systematic review in which they assessed forty one randomized control trials from a Cochrane review of alcohol reduction. The results indicated that behavior substitution, problem solving, and credible source were all linked to greater alcohol reduction. While this source provides pertinent information on alternative behavioral interventions, it does not highlight the role of social support at achieving the desired goals. Moon et al. (2019) conduct a more specific study that focuses on assessing the role of social support in motivating reductions in alcohol use. The researchers also conduct an experimental research which involves one hundred and nineteen participants with past criminal records. The researchers recruited these members from a correctional treatment facility. The participants were subjected to interviews to evaluate their alcohol consumption levels, both physical and psychiatric conditions, and the psychosocial factors linked to drinking behavior. The result showed that social support was linked to some motivation to change in terms of the importance of change and the confidence in change among the alcohol-impaired drivers.
Mavandadi et al. (2015) also conducted a similar study in which the authors sought to assess the moderating role of perceived social support on alcohol treatment outcomes. They exclaimed the extent to which perceived social support relates to longitudinal treatment outcomes among the alcohol addicts. The intervention measure in this case was a brief, telephone-based management approach compared to standard care. They utilized secondary analysis of data from a randomized trial that sought to compare the two interventions. While the findings did not find a significant impact for baseline perceived social support on various heavy drinkers, there was some positive impact with time. The study concluded that perceived social support had differential outcomes among patients. Those who received brief interventions benefited from certain therapy techniques that involved mobilization of some social resources, which would help enhance the ability for the patients to utilize their social supports. These findings suggested that there was a need for replication and further research towards understanding this interaction.
All of these studies on social support and its impact on behavior change has shown some significant contribution on helping drug addicts to change their behavior. However, the researchers have some glaring gaps that need to be filled. Among some of the weaknesses of the above studies, which also applied to many other researches on the topic is that the information presented is too general. Many of the studies do not specify the type of social support that was used. In addition, the use of a systematic approach to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of social support in managing the condition overlooks the limitations of the studies cited. Consequently, it is inappropriate to rely on such findings to make accurate and generalizable conclusions. Most importantly, these studies only cover the behavioral intervention, rather than maintenance.
A few studies focus on assessing abstinence in the management of the drug addiction behavior. Go et al. (2020) assessed the effect of two integrated interventions on alcohol abstinence and viral suppression among Vietnamese adults. The researchers organized their study in 3-group randomized clinical trials that included 440 participants, who were then subjected to combined intervention and brief intervention. Both groups were treated with motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. The findings showed that the interventions significantly increased the percentage of days that the individuals abstained from alcohol. This study focuses on communal intervention, which is cheaper than the clinical interve...