Re: ‘Provocations assignments’ for Day 1 of the NSF/EU/NIH Behavior Change Workshop
Dear Andrew and Cristina
We have distilled a set of topics that emerged as salient from participant’s responses to the idea set. One
theme that was identified in the set of responses to the workshop questions was: Computationally-modelling
health decision making processes, especially the dynamic nature of such processes, in a way that cross-cuts
health behavior change silos and incorporates “irrationality”. You have been teamed together to discuss this
theme on day one of the workshop and help provoke creative thinking of other workshop participants. Your
goal is to jointly develop an 8-minute presentation (that will be strictly timed) that will provoke an additional
12 minutes of group discussion about this theme. In your presentation, we would like you to summarize why
this theme is important, drawing jointly from your experience/research and the responses to the initial set of
questions from other attendees, and then as best you can, expand on the theme. One approach you could
take, but not the only way, would be to clearly list out the specific research challenges within the theme, and
then zoom in and bring your collective expertise to bear on one and propose how a new, big research effort
might lead to a convincing solution. Please focus on the BIG scientific/technical challenges that, if solved,
would (or could) transform our understanding and modeling of health behavior and our ability to achieve
behavior change at large scales. Please don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. Do NOT focus on funding, but DO
try to justify why a big effort might lead to big rewards. You should conclude with some questions that you
think others in the audience might be able to answer, that would help you better understand the theme.
We have intentionally paired you with a topic that may not be your primary research focus, and we have
intentionally paired people from the US and the EU with disparate backgrounds to further help us break out of
our geographic and research silos.
Your theme: Computationally-modelling health decision making processes, especially the dynamic nature of
such processes, in a way that cross-cuts health behavior change silos and incorporates “irrationality.”
For your team, we selected a topic that is obviously central to the endeavour: Computationally-modelling
health decision making processes, especially the dynamic nature of such processes, in a way that cross-cuts
health behavior change silos and incorporates “irrationality.” These models (using noisy or incomplete data)
should use context and available opportunity, past behavior, dynamic changes in local and global social norms,
emotional state, and cost-benefit trade-offs. They might be families or systems of models. They might need to
‘swear off’ our overreliance on cognitive models. Adaptive goal setting is only one component of this. How can
we develop the best models and use them to adapt interventions on the fly? Please think about this a way to
rethink new kinds of data that could help us rethink decision making, rather than an opportunity to review
past research. In what way can the use of new technology help with the task of understanding the dynamic,
sometimes irrational health decision making process? And what questions have we missed in this realm?
Provoke a discussion!
Let us know if you have any questions about the logistics, and please email a draft of your presentation to
Donna at [email protected] no later than October 10. Your participation in this exercise is absolutely key to the
smooth running of the workshop, and I know you are all busy, so if you are not going to be able to complete
this in a timely fashion, please let me know right away.
Thanks!!!
Donna, Stephen, Niilo and Ilkka