Changing Cultural Practices: A Contextualist Framework for Intervention Research

Despite significant progress in the behavioral sciences, we have achieved few widespread improvements in our society. Over the past forty years, effective interventions have been developed for many problems of human behavior, but only rarely has our knowledge been translated into changes in the incidence or prevalence of problems. This volume, authored by Oregon Research Institute psychologist Anthony Biglan, provides a framework for learning how to affect the incidence and prevalence of behavior and the larger social systems that influence behavior.

In the first part, the book provides a philosophical and theoretical framework for analyzing cultural practices and conducting research on how to change them. It addresses the ethical issues surrounding intentional efforts to change cultural practices. The second part applies this framework to four critically important cultural practices: (a) tobacco use, (b) childrearing, (c) sexism, and (d) environmental preservation. The third part examines how a science for changing cultural practices -- itself a set of cultural practices -- can be developed.

This book is relevant for anyone who is concerned with translating what we know about individual behavior into widespread benefits for populations.