Professional interventions are rarely successful when used to “normalize” the behaviour of a disruptive group of Dutch-Caribbean migrants. Surprisingly a large number of professionals have not succeeded in assimilating a relatively small group. Foucault developed a means of analysing power mechanisms, which is essential to understanding how non-conformist groups are turned into “normal” subjects. If, following Foucault, we conceive of professional interventions as power strategies, we may wonder what might undermine their effectiveness. This is part of a broader research question which asks whether Foucault’s description of normalizing power offers sufficient means to describe power strategies as reciprocal interaction. My thesis is that the concept “logics”, as used by Mol, offers tools that are a useful addition to Foucault’s theory. The ways in which Dutch professionals view problematic Dutch-Caribbean migrants and the interventions they use can be described as different logics.This enables us to recognize the similarities and frictions between different practices.
Evidence concerning psychosocial interventions for children and young people with externalizing behavior problems has amassed at an impressive pace in recent years. Interventions that have been proven effective are now considered vehicles through which the knowledge of “what works” can be applied in practice. Outcomes for children, young people, and their families, however, have not improved in line with these advances in knowledge. This difference between the knowledge of “what works” and the application of this knowledge in real-life practice has become known as the “implementation gap”. This dissertation explores questions considering the implementation gap, with a focus on whether professionals are delivering the interventions as intended (treatment integrity).The results of the research underlying this dissertation show that 1) although measuring treatment integrity is important, it is often missing or not examined under adequate circumstances in studies, 2) applying interventions with a high level of treatment integrity makes a real difference to the end-users of the services and 3) targeted and continued support to professionals with a focus on providing feedback on levels of treatment integrity is necessary to enable them to deliver interventions as intended. Organizing support around common factors of interventions can be a first step in integrating and providing feasible support for professionals that provide more than one intervention.
MULTIFILE
Despite increased interest in applying psychological theory to the practice of designing behavioral change interventions, design professionals often lack adequate knowledge and resources to do so. In this paper, we present a tool to help professionals in the creative industries design evidence-based health interventions, the Persuasive by Design model. This paper describes the contents and application of the model as well as plans for further development and testing.
MULTIFILE
