Practitioners often find, however, that they fail miserably when using such methods.
Hear about conditions under which fear appeals may work and learn how to develop effective persuasive messages that motivate healthy behaviors. This session will be run as a workshop where participants will develop a diagnostic scale for use with their clients and create persuasive messages for different client groups. A manual for assessing clients current coping strategies for engaging in a variety of healthy behaviors will be used. This manual details the theoretical basis of the workshop, gives concrete examples of how to ascertain where your client is with a given health behavior and offers examples on how to modify your messages to your client based on this information to achieve the desired outcomes. This 12-item scale takes a few minutes to complete and may be easily administered while an individual is in the waiting room.