health psychology

Health Infographic Project

Step 1: Identify a Health Problem

The first step is to identify a health problem that you are interested in targeting. You can do this in several different ways. First, think about any health conditions that you may have personally experienced. Maybe you yourself have had a health scare, a family member or close friend. Have you read an article lately about someone who struggled with a certain health problem? If not, check out some of the health problems listed in our textbook. You will find these in chapters 11, 13, and 14. I also like to read the Health section in TIME magazine. You will find it located here:

http://time.com/health/

Here are some things to keep in mind when you are thinking about choosing your health problem. Your health problem MUST be a diagnosable medical problem. For example, smoking is not a diagnosis. Lung cancer is the medical problem associated with the behavior of smoking. Your health problem has to be a medical diagnosis.

Here’s something else of which to be mindful. Our ultimate goal is to change a health behavior. Therefore, your health problem has to have a behavioral component to it. An easy example might be something like this. The health problem is obesity (Step 1) and the associated behavior you want to change is exercise (Step 3). Whatever problem you choose, be sure that you can easily identify the associated behavior that you are going to change in Step 3. I could argue that every health problem has a psychological/behavioral component to it. However, sometimes it’s harder to identify the behavioral component. For example, something like cancer appears to be very biological/medical only. However, even cancer has a behavioral component to it. Things such as our lifestyle choices will influence whether or not we get cancer. Once diagnosed with cancer, our attitudes toward it can influence whether or not we recover from it. Just remember that your goal is not to cure cancer. Your goal is to change those behaviors associated with cancer.

If you are having problems identifying a health problem, please feel free to contact me.

After you have decided on your health problem, do some research regarding your health problem. You may use your textbook, scholarly websites (no Wikipedia), scholarly journals, or other such reputable sources. You should use at least two sources. Do not forget to cite these references in your in-text citations and reference list. Both of these should be written using APA formatting.

Based on your research, write an ESSAY (including an introduction and conclusion) in which you answer the following questions:

Before beginning to write, make sure that your health problem is a medical diagnosis.

1. What are the symptoms of the health problem?

2. What is the prevalence of the health problem? (How common is the problem?)

3. What are the causes of the problem? (You can list several, but your focus should be on behavioral/psychological causes. See the explanation above in the general instructions.)

4. Why is this health problem a particular concern? Here are some things to consider:

a. Are people likely to die from this problem?

b. Does it reduce quality of life? If so, how?

c. Does it reduce a person’s ability to do things he/she once did?

d. Does it make the person feel bad/influence mental well-being? If so, how?

e. Is the treatment protocol difficult (chemotherapy; expensive medications, time consuming)?

5. Why did you choose this problem? (Think about these things: Did it effect you or someone you know? Is it interesting? Why? Is it a hot topic? Does is influence society at-large?)

6. Why does this problem need to be addressed?

Remember you may have no more than ONE sentence that is a direct quote. Papers with two or more direct quotes/sentences will receive a grade of 0.  This means that your ENTIRE paper/assignment may not have more than one sentence that is copied from a source. A direct quote is generally three or more words copied from another source.

Health Infographic Project

Step 2: Identify the Target Population

Anytime that you write you need to have a specific audience/target population in mind. For this part of the assignment, you are going to identify your audience. You are going to identify the specific portion of the population that you want to read your infographic and change their health behavior. You need to think logically about how this audience is connected to the specific health problem identified in Step 1.

There are a couple of different ways to select a population:

· Who is most likely to have the problem?

· Who is most likely to change their behavior?

· Who has the worst complications from the health problem?

· Who is easiest to reach with your message?

· Who is most likely to benefit from your infographic?

* I would research the answer to all of these, but your paper will focus on only one of these ways.

Start this process by thinking about the answers to the above questions. You will have to do some research to find out these answers. Be sure to use reputable websites (no Wikipedia), your textbook, or other reputable sources on your identified health problem. (You will need at least two sources.) In your paper you are going to describe your target population/audience and then provide the documentation that supports your decision. From the example given in the project summary, the health problem is infant mortality. I decided I wanted to target those most at risk for having an infant death. With this information, I would then write a paper describing young African-American females living in a certain zip code (most at-risk of an infant death). Then I would provide the evidence that supports that these individuals are the ones that are more likely to have an infant death. Finally, I would provide a description that explains why these individuals are more likely to have an infant death. In summary I provided this information: 1) describe the population, 2) provide evidence that supports my selection of this specific target population; i.e., young African-American females, and 3) why they are most likely to have an infant death.

Also, keep in mind that your target audience needs to be very specific and very narrow. You most likely would not have the resources to target “women” for example. Your target audience has to be much more specific. (See the example in the project described above.)

**Your overall focus is to select a certain population based on the “ways to select a population” described in the above bullet list and then write a paper supporting this decision.

Instructions for completing the paper:

Once you have decided on your population and have information to support this decision, write an ESSAY (including an introduction and conclusion) that describes your target population and provides evidence to support this particular population. You should answer the following questions:

1) Restate your health problem and provide a very brief description of the problem. (This is a nice piece of information to include in your introduction.)

2) Provide a thorough description of the specific population you will target with your infographic. If relevant, include information on gender, age, race, location, and relevant psychological characteristics. (Make sure your population is very narrow.)

3) Explain what characteristic you used to select your population (most at-risk, most likely to change their behavior, easiest to reach, etc. – from the bullet list above)

4) Explain how your target population is related to the health problem identified in Step 1. For example, my project is based on those most at-risk for an infant death, so I need to explain why young African-American women (Step 2) are most likely to have an infant death (Step 1).

5) Provide evidence that supports the selection of this population. Evidence should be thoroughly explained. It would be appropriate to describe the research project that provides support for your selection of this population. Your description should include identification of the IV and DV and results of the study.

Helpful Tips:

· Make sure that your target population is logically connected to the health problem you identified in Step 1. These must be connected!

· This assignment should only include information about your target population. Do not include information on the other parts of the project (health problem, health behavior, infographic.)

· Be sure to provide at least two references. Do not forget to include in-text citations and a reference list to document your citations. Both of these should be written using APA formatting.

· Remember you may have no more than ONE sentence that is a direct quote. Papers with two or more direct quotes/sentences will receive a grade of 0.  This means that your ENTIRE paper/assignment may have no more than one sentence that is copied from a source. A direct quote is generally three or more words copied from another source.

Health Infographic Project

Step 3: Identify the health behavior

In this part of the assignment, you need to identify your health behavior or what behavior you want to change in order to address the health problem identified in Step 1. Start by doing some background research on your particular health problem in terms of what behaviors you might want to change. You need to research behaviors related to your specific health problem. I suggest starting with a simple google search like “behavioral causes of X.” From here, you will likely be able to identify more scientific sources that support your specific health behavior.

When thinking about your health behavior, you need to think about your target population. The behavior needs to be related to your target population. Think about what your specific target population can do (or not do) to prevent the development of your health problem. It may help to look at your answer to question #5 in Step 2.

Example: In the example described above, my health problem was infant mortality. After doing research, we found out that there are multiple behaviors related to infant mortality (prenatal and postnatal deaths). All of these behaviors are known factors that increase the likelihood of an infant death: poor prenatal health care, incorrect infant sleeping position, alcohol and other drug abuse, and diet. I found out that young African-American women (Step 2) were more likely to have infant death (Step 1) because they did not have access to adequate prenatal health care. I then did a focus groups with young African-American pregnant women to discover the behavioral obstacles related to receiving prenatal health care. I found out that women would not access Medicaid because there was a myth that this would cause the state to pursue the father for child support. Thus, I decided to attempt to change the health behavior of accessing Medicaid benefits through informing them that this was just a myth (Step 3).

Be careful in identifying your behavior. Your behavior needs to be very specific. This is because the infographic that you develop to change the behavior is going to be based on which behavior you choose. If your behavior is broad, the infographic will be very difficult to create. The narrower the behavior, the better the infographic.

Also, pick something that is a behavior or something that you do. For example, feel happy is an emotion; not a behavior.

**Remember your overall focus is to select a behavior that you want your target population to do or refrain from doing to decrease the likelihood that they will develop your identified health problem.

Instructions for completing the paper:

After you have decided on the specific health behavior that you want to change, write an ESSAY (including an introduction and conclusion) that describes the behavior and why you chose this behavior. Provide at least two references in the information that answers the questions below.

In your description, you should include the following information:

1. Briefly restate your health problem and target population.

2. Describe the specific behavior you want your target population to do or refrain from doing in order to reduce the chance of having the health problem identified in Step 1. Answer the question, “What behavior is related to my health problem?”

3. Explain how this behavior is related to the health problem identified in Step 1.

4. Explain why people practice this behavior or why they refrain from the behavior. If the behavior is something that you want your target population to do, you need to answer the question, “Why doesn’t my target population practice this behavior?” If the behavior is something that you want the target population to refrain from doing, you need to answer the question, “Why does my target population do this behavior?”

5. Provide a specific statement explaining why you picked this behavior.

Helpful Tips:

· This part of the assignment should only address the health behavior that you want to change. Do not discuss how you will change this behavior. Do not describe the infographic. You will do this in Step 4.

· Make sure that your behavior is related to health problem identified in Step 1 and to the target population identified in Step 2. Why one group of people do something could be completely different than why another group of people do that same thing.

· Make sure that the behavior is something that you do. It needs to be a behavior.

· Be sure to provide at least two references that supports the information provided in the above questions. Do not forget to include in-text citations and a reference list to document your citations. Both of these should be written using APA formatting.

· Remember you may have no more than ONE sentence that is a direct quote. Papers with two or more direct quotes/sentences will receive a grade of 0.  This means that your ENTIRE paper/assignment may have no more than one sentence that is copied from a source. A direct quote is generally three or more words copied from another source.

Step 4 – Creating the Infographic

In this part of the assignment you are going to create the infographic that you would like for your target population to read in hopes of changing their health behavior. You are going to combine the information that you collected in Steps 1, 2, and 3 and use this to create your infographic.

For this assignment, you are going to submit the actual infographic and your answers to several questions about the infographic. This part of the assignment may be written in question and answer format.

There are a couple of ways to create the infographic. You can hand draw the infographic and then scan the final product into a document. My preference is for you to use one of the many free online websites for the creation of a digital infographic. My recommendation is to use Canva located at

www.canva.com

. You may use Power Point as well, but I do not recommend it. If using Power Point you may only have a maximum of two slides.

An infographic is visual image used to represent information. Infographics are typically pictures, drawings, charts, diagrams, etc. with the use of limited text. Your infographic should be 1 – 2 small pages (think brochure size) that are mostly images and some text. Keep in mind that you want to create something that your target audience will actually read. Therefore, it should be short and to the point. Here’s a helpful video on creating infographics:

Information to be included in the infographic:

1) Provide a brief description of the health problem.

2) Provide a brief description of the health behavior that you want the population to practice or refrain from practicing.

3) Explain the benefits of practicing the behavior or refraining from practicing the behavior. Think about individual benefits as well as benefits to society at-large.

4) Explain how to minimize any of the drawbacks from practicing the behavior or refraining from the behavior. For example, if you want the population to exercise, how can you make it easier for your population to exercise?

5) Make sure that your infographic will be likely to change the desired health behavior. This may mean that you need to include other information, make it visually appealing, make it easily understandable.

Note: Page 46 of the text has a chart on characteristics that make health communication more effective. (Table 3.3)

When you are creating your infographic you need to think about why your target population (Step 2) does not already do this behavior (or why do they do it) and what will make them change their behavior. You may want to go back and look at the theories of behavior change discussed in Module 4.

Questions to answer about your infographic:

1. Why do you think this infographic will work to change the health behavior of your target population? Think about the theories of behavior change.

2. Explain how the infographic and resulting behavior change will benefit the larger community.

Helpful Hints:

· Do not just list the symptoms, causes, and treatment of the health problem. This is boring. No one will read it, and certainly no one is going to change their behavior by such a bland infographic.

· Consider what will appeal to your target population. Think about what will make your target population change their behavior.

· Make sure that all of the steps in the project are related to one another. You need to create an infographic that will change the behavior (Step 3) of your target population (Step 2) in order to reduce the likelihood that they will have the health problem you identified in Step 1.

HealthInfographic Project Summer 2020

A large part of health psychology is changing health behaviors in order to improve the general health of individuals, thus increasing the health of our society at-large. One way to do this is through educational appeals. A popular and very modern way to provide education to a large group of individuals is through the use of infographics; either paper or digital ones. For this project you are going to create an infographic to change some health-related behavior.

You are going to complete the project in a series of steps. Step 1 is to identify which health problem, disease, or condition that you are interested in addressing. These are things like cancer, heart disease, depression, Alzheimer’s, etc In step 2, you will identify your target population. These are the people that you want to target with your infographic in an effort to address the health problem. In other words, who do you want to read your infographic? Step 3 is where you identify a health behavior that is related to the health condition. This is the thing that you want your target population to do or not do as a result of reading your infographic. Practicing or refraining from this behavior will decrease the likelihood that the reader will have the identified health problem. Step 4 is the infographic that you create to get the target population to change their health behavior.

You need to be very specific about this and do a great deal of planning before you begin to write. I recommend that you read the entire project and then outline each of the steps prior to submitting Step 1; at least outline the first three steps. You need to make sure that the health behavior identified in Step 3 is related to both the health problem identified in Step 1 and the target population identified in Step 2. For example, an endurance triathlete (Step 2 – population) exercises (Step 3 – behavior) for completely different reasons than a couch potato does which in turn has differential effects on chances for heart disease.

Here’s a brief sample:

Step 1 – Health problem: infant mortality

Step 2 – Target population: African-American teen mothers living in specific zip codes that are characteristically low-income areas (These are the people who are most at risk for an infant death)

Step 3 – Health behavior: Access Medicaid insurance in order to obtain prenatal healthcare (This is a behavioral cause of infant mortality.)

Step 4 – Infographic showing who is eligible and how to access Medicaid

Note: If you would like to email me something like the steps outlined above, I would be happy to provide feedback.

Instructions on how to complete each step can be found below.

1. Submission Instructions: Assignments will be submitted on Blackboard.

a. Make sure to click “Submit” instead of “Save” when submitting your assignments. I cannot open your paper or see what time you finished your paper until it is submitted. Saving allows you to come back to your work and finish it at a later time. Therefore, the paper is NOT sent to me at this time.

b. Make sure you get the message that your document has been successfully uploaded. If not, your paper was not sent to me. I also recommend that you take a screen shot of this screen as documentation.

2. Due Dates and Late Policy: Exercises must be turned in via Blackboard, in the “Health Infographic” link in Blackboard, no later than 11:59pm EST on the due date. You should submit your assignment early to avoid problems with Blackboard. The date/time stamp given to me by Blackboard is the day/time that I use in determining if there will be a point penalty due to lateness. Late papers are accepted with a 7.5 point penalty PER DAY. The late penalty will only be waived in the case of your own hospitalization or death in the immediate family. Permission to submit a late paper must be requested PRIOR to the due date. Documentation is required. Due dates are:

· Step #1 – Identify health problem – January 31

· Step #2 – Identify the target population – February 21

· Step #3 – Identify the health behavior – March 20

· Step #4 – Creation of the Infographic – April 10

3. Page Length: Assignments will generally be two pages in length. The assignment is not graded based on the length of the paper, but rather on the degree to which the requested content is thoroughly covered in your paper. Therefore, using page cheats like large margins are not necessary. Double-space the paper in a 12-point Times New Roman font using 1 inch margins on all sides

4. Missed Assignments: Each part of the assignment builds upon the previous assignment. For example, you cannot identify a target population without first identifying a health problem. Because of this I will allow you to turn in late assignments even if technically the assignment would be worth 0 points due to the late penalty. Papers submitted 10 days after the due date will receive a minimum grade of 25 points. You must submit all previous assignments before submitting the current assignment. Failure to submit these assignments will result in the current assignment receiving a grade of 25 points. If you originally skipped assignments 1 and 2, but would like to submit assignment 3, you must first complete assignments 1 and 2. You will receive at least 25 points for assignment 1 and 2 even if you submit them at the same time as assignment 3. If you do not submit assignments 1 and 2, assignment 3 will only be worth 25 points.

5. VERY IMPORTANT!! READ THIS SECTION!!

Citations and Plagiarism: You must obtain information to support your paper from sources like your textbook or scholarly websites. When you do this, there are several very important things to pay attention to:

A. APA Citation: You MUST correctly document information taken from other sources using the appropriate APA formatting for in-text citations and your reference listing at the end of your paper. I
highly
recommend that you review the APA Citation Primer found in the “Health Infographic” link in Blackboard. There is also an excellent online source available at

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/1/

. There are two particular sections that are most relevant; “In-Text Citations: The Basics” and “Reference List: Basic Rules.” You may NOT use another style such as MLA for citing sources. There are penalties for failure to cite sources and/or using APA formatting incorrectly.

Citations are required for both paraphrased information (information taken from a source but re-written in your own words) and direct quotes (information copied word-for-word from another source).

B. Direct Quotes: A well-written paper does not include a lot of direct quotes. You should gather information from other sources, but you should re-write this information in your own words. Papers containing more than one sentence that is a direct quote will receive a grade of 0. This means that your entire paper/assignment (Step 1 for example) may not have more than one sentence that is copied from a source. Direct quotes are counted by sentence and/or parts of a sentence, and not the number of times the quotation mark (“ ”) appears. As a general rule of thumb, you have a direct quote any time you copy three or more words. See the guidelines provided in the APA Citation Primer located in Blackboard for information on how and when to use direct quotes.

When you use direct quotes you MUST use quotation marks to indicate that you did not write this information. Information that is copied word-for-word from another source that does not include both a citation and quotation marks is plagiarism, and will be treated as such.

C. Plagiarism: When taking information from another source, you must be careful to avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism includes both intentional and inadvertent plagiarism. Intentional plagiarism is defined as “deliberate use of another author’s research, ideas, or language without acknowledging the source through footnotes, quotations, or reference.” Inadvertent plagiarism is defined as “the improper, but accidental, use of another’s ideas, words, or data without identifying the source. Inadvertent plagiarism typically occurs when the student fails to distinguish between direct quotes and general observations when doing research.” (Definitions were taken from Purdue University’s definition of plagiarism. More information regarding what constitutes plagiarism can be found at:

http://webs.purduecal.edu/integrity/dishonesty/definitions-plagiarism/

.)

Students often think that direct quotes only need a citation; i.e., something like Jones, 2017. Without quotation marks, the information that was copied word-for-word is plagiarism. This is because the missing quotation marks indicate that you wrote this information when in fact you did not. This is plagiarism. It is inadvertent plagiarism, but it is plagiarism.

All papers are checked for plagiarism through SafeAssign. SafeAssign checks your paper with other papers submitted through SafeAssign and with internet sources. It returns a percentage match with these other sources. If you are concerned about inadvertently plagiarizing from another source, you may submit a draft version so that you can check your SafeAssign score prior to submitting your final version. Several hours (or even a day or two) after you have submitted your paper, go into “My Grades” and view your SafeAssign report. You will submit both the draft version and the final version in the same link on Blackboard. Only the last version of your paper is graded. Final versions are not checked against the draft version.

Plagiarized papers will at least receive a grade of 0 and will be reported to the Office of Student Conduct and Academic Integrity. Depending of the severity of the incident, an F for the class and a notation of academic dishonesty on your transcript will be considered.

6. Original Work: Students are reminded that ODU’s Honor Code requires these exercises must be original work. You should not copy text for these assignments from previous papers that you have written (for my class or other classes) or from other’s student’s papers or from Internet sources. Additionally, ODU’s Honor Code prohibits you from sharing your assignment or any part of your assignment with other students in this class or other students taking this class in the future. Students violating this policy will be reported to the Office of Student Conduct and Academic Integrity.

7. Accepted Electronic Formats: Exercises should be submitted by attaching your document (do not use the comment box). Documents should be a , x, or .rtf file. I cannot open .wps or .odt files, and thus I cannot grade a .wps, .pages, or .odt file. If you use a Mac, make sure you are using a file format that can be read by PCs. Google documents are also not allowed because of the inability to use the SafeAssign function with this method. Additionally, you should be careful to submit the correct file (no temporary files, don’t submit my file, etc). A grade of 0 will be received for any text that I cannot read due to problems with opening the file.

8. If you are retaking this class, you must read this.

Resubmission of Previous Work: According to ODU policy, you may not submit a previous work for these assignments. That means that you may not submit the same paper that you have previously submitted to me for this assignment. Violation of this is considered to be academic dishonesty and will be treated as such. My recommended sanction for this violation is an F for the course. If you have taken this class with me you MUST contact me to receive instructions on how to complete this assignment. You should contact me within the first two weeks of class so that we have ample time to work out which are the appropriate assignments for you.

9. Grading: Each assignment is graded based on the completeness of each answer, the clarity with which the information is described, and the grammar and organization of the assignment. All questions and parts of questions must be fully answered to receive full credit. Full credit will not be given for answers that are only briefly described. Be sure to use the provided rubric to be sure that you have covered ALL of the required content. Assignments are worth a maximum of 75 points each for a total of 300 points.

10. Returned Papers: Because of the thoroughness with which each paper is graded, it takes me quite a while to return papers. Do not expect papers to be graded before a minimum of one week after the due date. In most cases all papers will be graded in approximately two weeks.