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Handout 7.4

CARRYING OUT A BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION CONTRACT

The activity I chose to modify was the amount of time I was allocating to studying. Before taking up this assignment I was studying 2 hours every night on a weekday. Given the workload I have taken up this year, I had to do much better than that and realistically wanted to get closer to 3 hours of uninterrupted study every weeknight which was the goal that I chose for myself for this current assignment. If I achieve this goal then weekly I would have studied 15 hours not including the weekend. This weekly target would be sufficient to meet my educational needs. To reward myself or to reinforce this goal, I decided that I would get to watch TV only if I had stuck to my goal of 3 hours of reading every night. The reward for meeting the weekly goal would be to watch a movie, since a 2 hour movie seems to be quite a luxury at this point of time. Having set myself a realistic goal, I have recorded below the data for the three days I worked on this goal.
Record:

Day/Date of the week

Objective study time in hours Wednesday, 06/19/2013 3hrs Thursday, 06/20/2013 3hrs Friday, 06/21/13 3hrs

Actual Study time in hours 2 hrs 2.5 hrs 2.75 hrs

Progress: I have made marginal progress on my goal of studying 3hrs a day. Even though I have increased my study time to 2hrs and 45 minutes, I am yet to reach the desired goal. However it has been only 3 days and I am gaining confidence that with a little more effort I would be able to reach my goal. Given the fact that I have a family and a job, it

seems to be a tough goal and I found that the reward was unrealistic, since by the time I get close to my goal it is invariably past midnight and it is too late to watch TV. So I have to come up with a better motivational reinforcement that is practical and desirable. At this point, the only reward I can think of is food. I intend to reward myself with dessert only if I reach my objective. In summary, it is too early to make any conclusions, but I definitely think I am more motivated to commit more time to studying, once I have written down my actual goals. I intend to be practical and maintain a log in the coming few weeks to see if I do meet my goals.