Women's Health
This intervention was developed for Merck and focused on the HPV vaccine. It was web-delivered and involved alternating assessment and response-tailored feedback. For example, users who were not interested in getting the vaccine received messages focused on education about HPV and the vaccine. Users who were considering the vaccine would be presented with strategies for dealing with concerns they may have. Examples below are for a user who expressed that she was not interested in vaccination.
Stage of change or readiness to get the vaccine was determined by a questionnaire at the beginning of the intervention and was used as a core branching variable for the remaining tailoring algorithms.
Users who indicated that they were not interested in getting the vaccine were routed to a small interactive quiz with alternating questions and informational screens. Above is an example of one of the informational screens. This quiz was intended to increase knowledge about the problem behavior, which has been found to be associated with increased readiness to change across a wide array of behaviors.
Users' perceived pros and cons of vaccination were assessed using this instrument. Tailored feedback was provided based on where each user scored in relation to the population of unvaccinated women.
After pros and cons of vaccination were measured, feedback was provided based on the user's score. This user's score was particularly low on perceived importance of pros of vaccination. Considering possible pros has been found to increase readiness for behavior change.