stephenrollnick

Dr. Rollnick and all other readers

I am trying to locate the original article that graphically depicts Readiness for change as in relation to an individual's percieved Importance and Confidence for change.

In case the graphic below does not come through:  confidence is depicted on the horizontal axis and importance on the vertical. 

I believe I first came across this concept in an article or pehaps a book by Dr. Rollnick, but I simply can't locate the original source.

I fell it is an elegant model and that someone deserves proper credit.

Any suggestions on who deserves credit for this and/or which article one should properly cite??

Colin

P.S.  Dr. Rollnick - it this is NOT your depiction of the relationship between importance and confidence for change, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on it.

One question I've heard from students, for example, is:  In that model, which line best depicts what the TYPICAL layperson would describe as "motivation"?  

(I'm certain it's not the horizontal axis, but arguements could be made for either of the other two)

Dear Colin,

Yes, the diagram comes from Health Behaviour Change: A Guide for Practitioners (1999) by Rollnick, Mason & Butler.  As far as I can remember, I designed it to show the links between these concepts, as a rough approximation and guide to understanding motivation. The logic was that high importance and confidence would approach readiness and that together, if positive, these three amounted to high motivation.

I must confess that this simple model was an attempt to help clinicians to understand and work with motivation in a more constructive way. For serious academics in the behaviour change field it probably lacks a few concepts, like intention. Although i wouldnt take it too seriously as a guide to behaviour change research, it does cross my mind that were importance and confidence to be measured reliably, I'd put money on high scores being correlated with a measure of readiness and indeed, subsequent behaviour change.

The context for this work was to avoid a reliance on readiness to change (or stages of change) as the a guideline for clinical work. Why? Because when a colleague and I interviewed some smokers we found that people who told us that they were midway along a readiness to change continuum (about smoking cessation) were very very different to one another. Some were high on confidence, and low on importance, while others revealed the opposite pattern. Their needs were quite different.

The concepts of importance and confidence were distilled from Bandura's twin concepts of outcome expectation (importance) and efficacy expectation (confidence). My friend and colleague Vaughn Keller came up with a very similar distinction, between "conviction" and  "confidence" at about the same time.  At one point we each thought that the other had "stolen" out good ideas!  Then we realised it was a coincidence.

One thing that pleases me is that simple questions derived from these two concepts have roved useful in clinical practice, or so people tell me. They are simply aids to good practice....

Hope this helps?

Steve

Dr. Rollnick

Yes, that certainly does help.   I was certain the diagram was from one of your articles or books but I simply could not locate it.  It helps to have the proper reference.

As I mentioned in my initial post, I find your diagram to be a very elegant way to visually conveying these crucial points.

Thank you so much!

colin