The Behaviour Change Collaborative will co-host Change 2024, in partnership with Social Marketing@Griffith.
Change is Australia’s premier social and behaviour change conference featuring a diverse range of speakers and participants from the health, social and environmental sectors.
It comprises two-days of ted-talk style presentations and workshops (included in the registration fee) at which attendees learn practical strategies and techniques to influence attitudes and behaviours that can be applied to real world challenges.
The BCC has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with Social Marketing@Griffith.
“The decision to co-host Change 2024 marks a major step forward in our commitment to working collaboratively with the team at SM@G,” said The BCC’s Founder and Managing Director, Luke van der Beeke.
“We are aligned on values and a shared commitment to creating a space where people tackling some of the world’s most wicked problems can share their ideas, successes and failures,” he said.
Prof. Sharyn Rundle-Thiele, Director at SM@G added: “We are delighted to welcome The Behaviour Change Collaborative as co-hosts of Change 2024. We look forward to uniting our efforts and making Change 2024 the most impactful year yet.”
We hope to see you on 17-18 October 2024 in Brisbane or online and take advantage of this opportunity to be part of a growing community of change agents drawn from Australia and beyond.
Program overview:
Session 1: Navigating Impact, Metrics and Meaningful Change
Session 2: People for the People, Empowering Communities for Change
Session 3: Conservation Catalysts, Innovation for the Planet
Panel: Empathy and Inclusivity
Session 4: End Food Waste, Recipe for Success
Workshops:
Unpacking Behavioural Influence for Intervention Design
Crafting a Strategic Impact Narrative
Pocket Filmmaking 101: Unleashing Your Creativity with Mobile Phone Video Production
Beyond the Individual: Leveraging Behavioural Ecological Systems for Change
Rediscovering the Secret Sauce of Your Programme: 12 Principles of Successful Behaviour Change
A comprehensive, Australian-first research project which aims to deeply understand teenagers’ experiences with vaping has revealed one in four teens are ‘hidden’ and at-risk of vaping, and that owning your own vape is a critical enabler of addiction.
The Influencing Gen Vape research, led by Perth-based social enterprise The Behaviour Change Collaborative (The BCC), in partnership with health promotion foundation VicHealth, involved surveys with almost 3,700 teenagers across Australia.
The Behaviour Change Collaborative’s Founder and Managing Director, Luke van der Beeke, said the research identified seven different groups of teenagers when it comes to vaping, all requiring nuanced information and support.
“It’s important to not just think of young people as either ‘vapers’ or ‘non-vapers’,” Mr. van der Beeke said. “Our research shows that it’s more nuanced than that, so our approach to addressing the issue needs to be more nuanced too.
“For example, the teenager who is curious but hasn’t tried vaping needs a different conversation and different information to the teen who is experimenting or the one who is addicted.”
Consistent with recent academic studies, The BCC’s research found about one-third of teenagers have tried vaping.
In addition, the research reveals that amongst those who haven’t ever vaped, there is a group of ‘susceptible’ teenagers, who are at a higher risk of vaping in the future.
“These ‘susceptible’ teenagers can otherwise be overlooked in the non-vaping count – we now have good insight into where they are at with vaping, what makes them susceptible, and how to strengthen their resolve to reject and avoid vaping,” Mr van der Beeke said.
The Behaviour Change Collaborative’s Director Behavioural Insight, Donna van Bueren, said of those involved in the study, one-fifth are currently vaping, at different levels of use.
“The research reveals a particular group of teenagers, the ‘experimenters’, believe that they are in control of their vaping and will not become addicted because they don’t vape very often,” she said.
“We also discovered that owning a vape is a critical enabler of addiction – after purchasing their own, the teenager’s vaping frequency escalates, followed by nicotine withdrawal and signs of addiction.
“Another key insight showed that many teens start vaping and increase how often they vape for mental health reasons – coping with stress, managing their anxiety, helping them to relax. It’s important to support teens to manage their mental wellbeing in positive and healthy ways.”
The Influencing Gen Vape research was designed to discover the most effective messages, information, skills and supports teenagers need to discourage them from vaping in the future.
VicHealth CEO, Dr Sandro Demaio, said this research arms parents and the community with powerful knowledge on how to support teens.
“We’re proud to partner with The Behaviour Change Collaborative on this groundbreaking project, and to start sharing the important findings with those working in sectors, such as local government, health promotion, community sport and education,” Dr Demaio said.
“Our collective goal is for the learnings to support local communities to craft health promotion interventions and messaging that will positively influence teens’ attitudes and behaviours towards vaping.”
The research also revealed that most teenagers, including older teens, care most about the opinion of their parents, above all others. In light of this finding and building on this and previous studies, The BCC, with the support of VicHealth, has written Talking to your teen about vaping, an evidence-based guide to help parents and caregivers navigate conversations about vaping with their child.
About the study:
Influencing Gen Vape: Unveiling insights into segments of teen vaping categorises young people into distinct segments, decoding their motivations, attitudes and behaviours towards vaping.
As part of the research, online surveys and in-depth conversations were held with 3,699 teenagers aged 12-18 years from across Australia between July – September 2023.
This study gives insights into how to craft health promotion interventions and messaging that will positively influence teens’ attitudes and behaviours towards vaping.
Key insights from Influencing Gen Vape include:
It’s important to reinforce and reward teens’ decision not to vape, as well as encouraging experimenting teens to stop and helping addicted teens to quit.
The role of stress: Many teens start vaping and increase how often they vape for mental health reasons – coping with stress, managing their anxiety, helping them to relax. Parents and health professionals can support them to explore alternative ways to manage these feelings.
Focus on susceptible teens: A group of ‘susceptible’ at-risk teenagers were identified. They’re curious about vaping, have the opportunity to share a vape with friends, and many think they might try vaping in the future.
Owning your own vape is a critical enabler of addiction: After purchasing their own vape, teens’ vaping frequency escalates, followed by nicotine withdrawal and signs of addiction.
A parent’s opinion really matters: Some teens don’t vape because they don’t want to disappoint their parents. It’s important for parents to let them know they think vaping is a harmful decision.
Different teenagers have different needs for information, persuasion and support, so a tailored approach is needed. The Talking to your teen about vaping conversation guide helps parents and carers identify which approach will best suit their child.
An Australian-first research project which aims to deeply understand teenagers’ experiences with vaping has revealed that parents hold more power and influence in tackling vaping than they might realise.
The Influencing Gen Vape research, led by The Behaviour Change Collaborative in partnership with VicHealth, involved surveys and in-depth conversations with over 3,500 teenagers across Australia.
The results have been used to create Talking to your teen about vaping, an evidence-informed conversation guide for parents and carers. The guide helps decode a teenager’s motivations, attitudes and behaviours towards vaping, and understand what messages resonate most.
The BCC’s Managing Director Luke van der Beeke said it was important to not just think of young people as either ‘vapers’ or ‘non-vapers’.
“Our research shows it’s more nuanced than that, so our approach to addressing the issue needs to be more nuanced too.
“For example, the teenager who is curious but hasn’t tried vaping needs a different conversation and different information to the teen who is experimenting or the one who is addicted,” he said.
Dr Sandro Demaio, VicHealth CEO, said it was a welcome finding from the research to see that teenagers really trust their parents and value their opinions.
“Many parents and carers say they feel powerless when it comes to vaping, which is completely understandable.
“So, it was interesting and exciting to find that most teenagers, including those who vape, genuinely care what their parents think.
“We’re proud to partner with The Behaviour Change Collaborative on this groundbreaking project, and to start sharing the important findings with those working to positively influence teens’ attitudes and behaviours towards vaping,” Dr Demaio said.
The goal of the research, and the partnership more broadly, is for learnings to support local communities to craft health promotion interventions and messaging that will positively influence teens’ attitudes and behaviours towards vaping.
The Behaviour Change Collaborative (The BCC) and VicHealth have joined forces on a major research project to explore teen vaping across Australia.
The project builds on The BCC’s Healthway funded Being Gen Vape research which provided insights into existing vaping attitudes, motivations and behaviours, and a preliminary model for the segmentation of teen vaping behaviour.
The value of quantification is not solely in establishing vaping prevalence but in the ability to profile each segment by motivation (need) and attitudes, behavioural patterns, and trajectory to addiction. This will help to identify whether targeted interventions should be prevention based or cessation based, and for whom.
“We’re pleased to be partnering with VicHealth on such an important public health issue,” said The BCC’s founder and managing director, Luke van der Beeke.
The intent of the research is to provide outputs that help interested parties to set policy and intervention priorities, strategy directions, and intervention activities. We want to contribute to a coordinated, evidence-informed approach to addressing teen vaping. The findings of the research will be delivered in a user-friendly and fit-for-purpose format that can be shared widely across sectors.
“This piece of work is intended to augment existing research projects and activities. Our focus is on the delivery of behaviourally informed findings that can be picked up and used to inform future practice,” Mr van der Beeke said.
Our earlier research clearly indicates that mass reach single-theme messaging will have limited impact with respect to breadth and scale, because of the clear existence of different attitudinal and behavioural teen vaping segments.
This research will help to direct communications content, so that it focused on the right motivation and persuasive message and can be targeted at the right group.
“We’re looking forward to generating findings that can be picked up and used by governments, NGO’s, and other stakeholders to inform health communications campaigns, as well as multi-lever health promotion and social marketing strategies,” Mr van der Beeke said.
If you’re a high school teacher, or the parent of a child in high school and you would like to get involved with this research, please email hello@thebcc.org.au
In early 2021, The BCC was commissioned by EMHS to support the Belmont, Victoria Park, South Perth Local Drug Action Group (BVPSP LDAG) develop its Youth Alcohol Action Plan. Minimising alcohol use and related harms among young people is a key priority for the LDAG.
Following the facilitation of two successful stakeholder engagement sessions with over 26 local partner organisations, we suggested meaningful consultation with young people was needed to sense check stakeholder outputs, and to obtain additional insight for potential use in the plan.
EMHS immediately supported the idea and leveraged its strong relationships with partner organisations to arrange two sessions with small groups of young people (aged 12-17) in South Perth and Belmont. The sessions were planned and facilitated by The BCC’s Luke van der Beeke, with the support of Olivia O’Connor Liv by Design.
The engagement captured the useful, and at times very candid views of 45 young people on their exposure to, and use of alcohol. We met on their terms, in places they felt comfortable and listened. Then we listened some more.
The sessions were designed to provide young people from a range of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds with the opportunity to have their say in a safe and fun environment within their own community.
The two informal workshops proved to be confirmatory of stakeholder priorities, while also providing useful insights which were used to augment and fine tune the final plan.
We’d like to thank everyone we worked with at EMHS for the opportunity to engage on such a rewarding project, and particularly Megan Milligan, Colby McGuire and Linda Parsons. Thanks also to the BVPSP LDAG and all the local stakeholders we had the pleasure of meeting on the journey.
Congratulations to everyone involved on the nomination, and more importantly, on the development of the Plan itself.
The Behaviour Change Collaborative was contacted by ABC Mornings for an interview about our Being Gen Vape research following news of increased calls to help lines from teens struggling with vaping.
The interview with Luke van der Beeke is available in full below.
Eddie Williams interview with Luke van der Beeke (MP3)
by ABC Mornings Pilbara and Kimberley 16 November, 2022
If you’re a parent and keen to know more about our research on teen vaping and what teens think adults need to know you may be interested in our upcoming parent information webinar.
