Order is needed to promote linear or quantum changes in nutrition and physical activity behaviors: a reaction to 'A chao
- PDF / 162,135 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 610 x 792 pts Page_size
- 25 Downloads / 161 Views
BioMed Central
Open Access
Commentary
Order is needed to promote linear or quantum changes in nutrition and physical activity behaviors: a reaction to 'A chaotic view of behavior change' by Resnicow and Vaughan Johannes Brug* Address: ErasmusMC University Medical Centre Rotterdam, Department of Public Health, P.O. Box 2040; 3000 CA Rotterdam, the Netherlands Email: Johannes Brug* - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 19 September 2006 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2006, 3:29 5868-3-29
doi:10.1186/1479-
Received: 21 August 2006 Accepted: 19 September 2006
This article is available from: http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/3/1/29 © 2006 Brug; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Recently, Drs. Ken Resnicow and Roger Vaughan published a thought-provoking paper in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (IJBNPA). They argue that the most often used social-cognition theories in behavioral nutrition and physical activity are of limited use. These models describe behavior change as a linear event, while Resnicow and Vaughan posit that behavior change is more likely to occur in quantum leaps that are impossible to predict. They introduce Chaos Theory into the behavioral nutrition and physical activity domain as a more valid framework to study the complex process of health behavior change. The present paper is a commentary on Resnicow and Vaughan's article by Resnicow's opponent in a recent debate-session at the annual meeting of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. The chair of that meeting, Prof. Tom Baranowski, provides a separate commentary on Resnicow and Vaughan's paper also published recently in the IJBNPA. In the present commentary I relate Resnicow and Vaughan's paper to the other contributions to the Theory debate in the IJBNPA. I recognize the limited success of social cognition models, and, next to a better application of these models and more thorough research to test these model, also support research to further test the quantum and chaotic character of health behavior change. However, if such research supports the chaotic and quantum nature of health behavior change, the implications for behavioral nutrition and physical activity interventions may be limited, because even if behavior change is quantum rather than linear, the social cognition models are still relevant to inform interventions to promote quantum leaps in behavior change.
Background From the very start of the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (IJBNPA) the journal has recognized the limited success of the prevailing health behavior theories in explaining and predicting nutrition and physical activity behaviors and behavi
Data Loading...
