Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning Phase, Implementation Phase, Exit and Evaluation Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Stages of Behaviour Change:
Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training
Specific Topics: Outreach and Communications; Community Change Agents
When someone is contemplating making a change, there is balance between their reasons for and against change, and people often experience a period characterised by ambivalence where they weigh the advantages and disadvantages of change to help them make a decision. Resolving this ambivalence and tipping the balance in favour of change can be achieved by strengthening a person’s language about their reasons to change, referred to as change talk, and softening their language in favour of the status quo, referred to as sustain talk. The purpose of this facilitator resource is to enable you to recognize and understand the difference between change talk and sustain talk. Your ability to recognize change talk and sustain talk is a necessary first step to enabling you to effectively facilitate conversations about change as needed to evoke and strengthen community members’ rationales for change (change talk), and overcome their arguments for not changing (sustain talk).
Ambivalence
Ambivalence is the state of experiencing conflicting beliefs, feelings or emotions simultaneously, which can stop people’s progress towards change. When someone is in a state of ambivalence, they will often have very good reasons for change and very good reasons against change. The language community members use (change talk and sustain talk) will indicate whether they are in this contemplation, or ambivalent stage of change.
If someone is simply not yet ready to change or does not believe there is a problem, this is different than ambivalence. In such situations you may instead encounter resistance talk, indicating they are in the pre-contemplation stage of change. For example, someone may say “I don’t believe this is a big a problem and don’t see the need to change.”
Change Talk
The acronym “DARN CAT” is useful to use to understand the types of change talk we hear. When someone is preparing to change, “DARN talk occurs, which is described with examples in the table below [111].
| Types of Change Language | Change Talk Examples |
|---|---|
| Desire Statements about preference for change. | “I’d like my animals not to be lame regularly.”“I want to...” “I would like to...” “I wish…“ |
| Ability Statements about capability. | “I guess I could pick out my animal’s feet more regularly.”“I could…”, “I can...”, “I might be able to…“ |
| Reasons Specific arguments for change | “I want my animals to have good welfare.”“I would probably feel less stress if my animal’s welfare improved”“My animal needs to feel better as my family’s livelihood depends on it.” |
| Need Statements about feeling obliged to change. | “I must spend less time and money seeking treatments from animal health service providers.” “I ought to…”, “I have to…“, “I really should…” |
When someone is close to resolving their ambivalence in favour of change, CAT talk appears which is described with examples in the table below.
| Types of Change Language | Change Talk Example Statements |
|---|---|
| Commitment Statements about their willingness to change. | “I have good reasons to improve my animal’s welfare.”“I am going to ... “, “I promise…”, “I intend to... “ |
| Action Statements about their readiness to take action. | “I’m willing to talk to an animal health service provider about this.” “I am ready to ... “ “I will start tomorrow…” |
| Taking steps Statements about action taken. | “I’ve started attending community meetings where this topic is discussed.”“I actually went out and…”, “This week I started...” |
Sustain Talk
Any language that can act to promote change also has an equal and opposite partner in favour of staying the same: sustain talk. You will be able to identify sustain talk when a person verbalizes their reasons not changing. The table below outlines the types of sustain talk with examples.
| Types of Sustain Language | Sustain Talk Example Statements |
|---|---|
| Desire Statements about preference for staying the same/not changing. | “I don’t want to spend that long trying to prevent issues.” |
| Ability Statements about not having capability. | “I’ve tried, and I don’t think I can check my animal’s feet that often.” “I can’t afford to seek treatment for my animal.” |
| Reasons Specific arguments against change | “If I try to manage this issue I just create a problem somewhere else.” |
| Need Statements about not feeling an obligation to change. | “I’ve got to focus my time on other things.” |
| Commitment Statements about their unwillingness or lack of commitment to change. | “I’m just not going to care for my animal’s feet - that’s final.” |
| Action Statements about not wanting to take action. | “I’m prepared to accept the risks of keeping my animals this way.” |
| Taking steps Statements about actions no taken. | “I threw away that information sheet earlier this week.” |
Change talk and sustain talk are often intertwined, even within the same sentence. This is the simultaneous nature of ambivalence, and guidance for supporting community members tonavigate through it and elicit change talk can be found in facilitator resources 4. Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change and 5. Negotiated Behaviour Change: Guidance on Overcoming Resistance to Change, and 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change.
This resource was developed with support of Human Behaviour Change for Animal (HBCA) and Alison Bard