NZ Social Marketing Network webinar explores engaging teen boys to prevent violence and Practice Theory-driven strategies for vaping cessation interventions. Watch the Webinar to Learn More.

The somewhat unlikely scenario of teenage boys driving prevention of violence against women is the topic of this webinar. Kate Handley, Victoria University of Wellington, will share her research investigating whether boys' involvement is plausible, what this kind of change could look like and how social marketers could adopt strategies to engage boys in prevention.

Using social norms theory combined with a gender transformative approach, Kate's research proposes that there is a ‘norms perception-reality’ gap among teenage boys. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with 14 teenage boys, insights around their views on violence against women and its influence were uncovered to develop a better understanding of the problem and social marketing solutions. Co-design workshops followed leading to a new prevention framework for change; one that can start to close the norms perception-reality gap by reframing violence against women in the eyes of teenage boys. This is important new research that can help drive change in practice and contributes to theory building in prevention science.

Promoting vaping cessation

More young people are experimenting with vapes and are developing nicotine addictions. As vaping is a relatively new behaviour, there’s a lack of vaping cessation interventions and further research is needed in this area. Brianna Donald, University of Canterbury, will share her research which aims to understand how practices around vaping contribute to its adoption and then identifies potential interventions that can mitigate these practices, and ultimately vape use.

Practice Theory has allowed this research to explore the subjective experiences of participants and how practices can inform vaping intervention development. Specifically, this research has used the Practice perspective to develop a theoretical framework for social marketers when developing vaping interventions. This includes other behaviours that are like vaping. This thesis found that Practice Theory is a promising theory for vaping that allows for a new unit of measurement to be targeted. Additionally, the Practice perspective is useful to social marketers in creating an adaptive vaping intervention. This study presents the use of practices as a new topic in the context of vaping to be further researched. Furthermore, this thesis contributes to the social marketing literature by identifying what aspects of smoking cessation interventions should be used for vaping cessation intervention development. Lastly, this thesis proposes a Practice-based theoretical framework to result in long-term behaviour changes.

Source: New Zealand Social Marketing Network, 11 November 2024