Changing Cultural Practices: A Contextualist Framework for Intervention Research

by Anthony Biglan

Researchers have made significant progress in the behavioral sciences during the last forty years, but, as a society, we have achieved few widespread cultural improvements as a result. This book offers a contextualist approach both for learning how to affect the incidence and prevalence of behavior and for changing the cultural practices that direct individual behavior. The book begins with a philosophical and theoretical framework for analyzing cultural practices and conducting research on how to change them. Then it applies this framework to important areas of cultural practice-tobacco use, childrearing, sexism, and environmental preservation. Finally, the book outlines the development of a science of changing of cultural practices.

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Anthony Biglan, Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist at Oregon Research Institute and the Co-Director of the Promise Neighborhood Research Consortium. He has been conducting research on the development and prevention of child and adolescent problem behavior for the past 30 years. His work has included studies of the risk and protective factors associated with tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use; high-risk sexual behavior; and antisocial behavior. He has conducted numerous experimental evaluations of interventions to prevent tobacco use both through school-based programs and community-wide interventions. And, he has evaluated interventions to prevent high-risk sexual behavior, antisocial behavior, and reading failure.

In recent years, his work has shifted to more comprehensive interventions that have the potential to prevent the entire range of child and adolescent problems. He and colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences published a book summarizing the epidemiology, cost, etiology, prevention, and treatment of youth with multiple problems (Biglan et al., 2004). He is a former president of the Society for Prevention Research. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Prevention, which recently released its report documenting numerous evidence-based preventive interventions that can prevent multiple problems. As a member of Oregon’s Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission, he has helped to develop a strategic plan for implementing comprehensive evidence-based interventions throughout Oregon.

Reviews

[S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthony Biglan is one of the few people who can explain functional contextualism, RFT and group behaviour change in simple (ish) terms. A great - unfortunately I cannot find a copy for my own collection!