How can we change behaviour around screens and

(How) can we change behaviour around screens and books?

Correlations between reading engagement (especially fiction) and attainment (PISA 2015)

Just correlation? (Ritchie 2015: ‘Does learning to read improve intelligence? ’)

But reading engagement among young people is falling (Merga 2016) “Scotland’s stories by word and screen”

But parents and (some) young people themselves might welcome external change Merga 2016

Can we – should we? – try to change young people’s behaviour? Michie et al p. 64 https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=v. Fhi 2 l. BFd. Zk&t=0 s&inde x=10&list=PLPc. POMDx. Ferk-fbv. DKd. KTv. OQleg. CNg. Uvl “ DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) programme in US schools: evidence that it was at best ineffective when students were followed up 10 years later. The programme focused on reflective motivation but the antidrug rhetoric was thought to alienate students. In addition, portraying drug abuse as more frequent than it was may havecraeted amore conducive social environment for taking drugs. “

Behaviour change interventions: better researched in medicine?

The Behaviour Change Wheel

Theories of behaviour Why do we do what we do? How much control do we have over our behaviour?

COM- B model • Capability (physical, psychological eg skills) • Opportunity (environment) • Motivation (automatic eg addiction, reflective eg goals).

Worksheet 1 Define the problem in behavioural terms. Behaviour – physical action in the world (eye saccades to holding book/remote). • Useful – be aware that these are widely dispersed in time and space. • Less useful – so all the harder to control? • Useful – precision guided by questions • Less useful – the answers make things less precise?

Worksheet 2 Task 1: Generate a long list of candidate target behaviours that could bring about the desired outcome • Useful – scope to get everyone involved in thinking about this (I didn’t…) • Useful – the COM (capability, opportunity, motivation) theory of behaviour • Less useful – it still felt like a scatter gun ‘what else can you think of’ exercise • Less useful – how do you know you didn’t miss the one thing that would really work?

Worksheet 2 Task 2: prioritise the behaviour • Useful – helped identified what was core (carving out time) and what contributed to the core (eg libraries etc)

Worksheet 3 Specify the target behaviour • Useful – being realistic about the costs • Less useful – it’s very easy to further marginalise already marginalised children (eg poor literacy, dyslexia, book poverty, adults with these problems…). You tend to/have to generalise across the cohort.

Worksheet 4 Use the COM-B model to identify what needs to change in order to bring about the target behaviours. • Useful – again, forces acknowledgement of all the costs/resources needed • Useful – shows the interconnectedness of behaviour across a range of domains and people • Less useful – you end up choosing all of the COMB categories?

Conclusions • ‘We can add x% to the IQ of your whole cohort, or raise your PISA score by y% if we can achieve the target behaviour’ -? • The more joined up the interventions, the greater the chance of success? • Small incremental successes have long wrong benefits (eg see smoking decline).