Essential Element 1 Resources: Questions

Questions to Help Understand the Sexual Reproductive Health Issue among Urban Youth

The SRH Problem

1. What is the SRH problem?
2. What factors contribute to the problem? What causes or contributes to those factors?
3. Who is affected by the problem?
4. What evidence demonstrates there is a health problem? Do you have evidence to show the burden of the health problem in your community?
5. What recommendations or guidelines (i.e., national policies, clinical guidelines) exist related to the SRH problem?

Intended Audience

Identifying appropriate intended audiences:

1. Who is the most affected by the SRH problem?
2. Which audiences are your partners and stakeholders interested in reaching?
3. Which audiences do you or your partners have access to?
4. Which audiences fit in with your organization’s priorities?
5. Who is most likely and willing to change their behavior?

Segmenting the intended audience:

1. What are the segments in your intended audience? How do they differ from each other with regards to their behavior?
2. Which audience segments are most affected by the problem?
3. Which audience segments are most likely and most willing to change their behavior?
4. How does your SBCC theory help you segment your audience (e.g., where are they along the Stages of Change)?
5. What does your audience value in their life? What are their hopes and dreams? What do they want out of life?
6. Who influences your primary audience?

Behavior

Selecting a behavior:

1. What is the current behavior of your intended audience?
2. What is the most realistic behavior change for the intended audience to adopt?
3. Will a change in this behavior actually affect the problem?
4. Should you select one behavior or a series of behaviors?

Understanding barriers and facilitators to behavior change for your intended audience:

1. What might keep the audience from adopting the new behavior?
2. Are there environmental factors that play a role? What are they?
3. Are there policies or standards (for example, government laws or corporate policies) that either help or hinder the behavior change?
4. What makes the audience’s current behavior easy? What makes the desired behavior difficult?
5. Is it a measurable behavior? Is it observable? How would you measure it?
6. What happens on days when your audience is successful at doing the desired behavior? What’s different about those days? What made it easier to do it on that day?
7. What about days when your audience does not do the desired behavior? What happens on those days? What is different?
8. Where does the audience have the opportunity to try the desired behavior? Where don’t they?

Benefits of the behavior:

1. What does your intended audience like about the desired behavior?
2. What is appealing about it?
3. What benefits can you reasonably offer to your audience?
4.  What new behavior will be easiest for them to adopt?
5. What could they fit into their lives?
6. Does your audience believe the desired behavior will provide them with a certain benefit? What do they think and how do they feel about that benefit?
7. Does the audience believe they can do the behavior?

Barriers to the behavior:

1. What does your audience not like about the desired behavior?
2. What is unappealing about changing their behavior?
3. What things keep them from doing the behavior? (costs/barriers)
4. What costs/barriers do you have the ability to modify or reduce?

Intervention Strategy

1. What strategies were used in past interventions with similar goals? Who was the intended audience of those interventions? How are the audiences similar to or different from your intended audience?
2. Which strategies are promising?
3. Which strategies have not worked in the past?
4. Are there strategies that have been fully evaluated or draw on a base of evidence?

Communication Channels

1. Where does the audience get information about the desired behavior?
2. Where does the audience spend time?
3. Who influences or could influence your audience to do the desired behavior? To start it? To maintain it?
4. Who do they listen to about this behavior? Who is a credible source of information? Who is most motivating? (i.e., this helps for identifying spokespersons and channels of communication)
5. Who would be a credible source of information for the audience about the health topic or about the behavior?