Implementing Social Norm Pedagogy to Impact Students Personal Health Behavior

This quantitative exploratory research study describes the incorporation of Social Norms as a unique pedagogical method in an undergraduate Health Behaviors course (N = 32). With the use of an audience response system (clickers), students anonymously answered health-behavior related questions. Aggregate data from the class was compared to state and national data from readily available databases to encourage student engagement, bring relevance to theoretical concepts, and launch meaningful discussion. The results from the data show that, the incorporation of the Social Norms teaching methodology had a strong impact on students adopting more positive attitudes (88%) toward their own health-related behaviors, and also resulted in changes to their own behaviors (72%). Fifty-six percent of students made suggestions to family and/or friends regarding health-related behavior change. Students gave a strong recommendation to both the use of clickers (87%) and Social Norms pedagogy (84%). Students reported having high levels of truthfulness (94%) in their responses and the majority (85%) felt comfortable with their clicker responses being anonymous. Among the small percentage (15%) of students who reported feeling uncomfortable discussing personal health-behaviors in class, no relationship was found between students' comfort level and gender, religious beliefs, or political beliefs.