Identifying A Construct That Relates To The Component (Essay Sample)

KENDRA WATKINS
EXCELSIOR COLLEGE
16TH FEBRUARY 2018
TOPIC: APPLYING THEORY TO EVALUATION
IDENTIFYING A CONSTRUCT THAT RELATES TO THE COMPONENT
The behavioral theory that best suits the activities above is the Social Cognitive Theory. It is the behavioral theory based on the idea that people can learn new behaviors by observing others. The theory holds that people learn by observing others, with the environment, behavior, and personal factors acting as primary factors which influence development in a reciprocal triadic relationship.
The core concepts of this theory can be seen in the activity set by Get Moving! as explained below.
1 Personal: Whether the individual will log in to the mobile app and how many times per week they will do this. The amount of time the individual will spend exercising and engaging in regular physical activities.
2 Behavior: How well are the individuals following the instructions taught in the one-hour instructional sessions and the number of calories the individual gets to lose per day according to the app. The amount of calories lost is important since they will determine the kind of personal motivation the students will have to make the new ‘exercising behavior’ a habit.
3 Environmental: The aspect of the buddy system is important since it will provide the external influence that the individual needs to complete the behavior.
The construct from Social Cognitive Theory that relates to the activities set by Get Moving! is Facilitation/Behavioral Capability. The reason I’ve chosen this construct is that the activities provide tools (mobile app), resources (instructional sessions), and environmental changes (buddy system) that make the new behaviors easier to perform.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE INTERVENTION
The intervention seems to have more strengths than weaknesses. The strengths of the interventions are mainly based on the fact that the intervention provides personal motivation in the form of a personal mobile app where an individual can check their progress and environmental motivation in the form of the buddy system where the buddy can motivate an individual when they are feeling like giving up. These two, that is, personal motivation and environmental motivation, are both important for behavioral change.
The weakness which I’ve noticed in the intervention is that it is too competitive. Posting the results of the calories burned in a day can deter the less active students from taking part in the intervention to avoid embarrassment. The facilitators of the intervention should have recognized that the participants are high school students who are usually very conscious of what others say about them.
EVALUATING THE INTERVENTION USING THE RE-AIM FRAMEWORK
The RE-AIM model includes Reach which is the percent and representatives of individuals willing to participate, Effectiveness which is the impact of the intervention on targeted outcomes, Adoption which is the percent of settings and intervention staff that agree to deliver the program, Implementation which is the skill and consistency with which various program elements are delivered by various staff, and Maintenance which is the extent to which individual participants maintain behavior change in the long-run (Glasgow, 2016).
The individual level impact is measured by the RE measures (Reach*Effectiveness). It a little bit difficult to measure the two at the moment sinc...