Explicit and Implicit Persuasive Communications over Time To Initiate and Maintain Behavior Change: New Perspective Utilizing a Real-life Dental Hygiene Situation1,2

Reacting to the failure of most persuasive communications to maintain behavior changes once they are established, in the context of junior high school dental hygiene programs, the present investigation explores the effects of behavioral measurement itself (as an unplanned treatment effect) in maintaining a specific behavior once it is established. Using a modified time-series extension of a basic pretest-treatment-posttest design with a variety of treatment conditions and a novel behavior measure as the dependent variable, it was established that the process of measuring behavior itself was possibly as effective as treatment conditions. All conditions effected behavior changes and maintained them for a 10-week period.