My group used 2 different behaviour strategies to enable the participants to learn more about the ways to help problem gamblers.
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bEHAVIOUR STRATEGIES
A token economy is when a token, a conditioned reinforcer, is given to reinforce behavior is accumulated and exchanged for goods over time. (Martin and Pear, 2015)
During our roadshow, we applied this throughout our game stations, where the participant gains a gambling chip for every correct answer given, for a total of 9 correct answers and at the end, they may exchange their chips for a prize.
A token economy increases interest in the subject and can result in higher academic performance and frequency in target behaviors. (Aljuhaish, 2015)
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Token economy
As we want the participants to perform well, answer all the questions correctly, we figured that if we gave a token for every right answer that could be accumulated and exchanged for prizes, the participants would be more motivated to learn and understand the material (ways to help problem gamblers) that allows them to answer the questions correctly.
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NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
Negative Reinforcement is the removal of an unpleasant stimulus to reinforce a behaviour which in the context of our game is the introduction of uncomfortable gloves that inhibited their ability to shoot down the correct answer properly which can only be removed when they shot down a correct answer.
(Martin & Pear, 2015)
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This would make them more willing to get the answers right to rid of the uncomfortable gloves.
MET OUR SMART OBJECTIVE:
“At the end of the session, at least 70% of participants know at least 3 ways to help adults with PG”
Despite meeting our SMART objective, I do not think that the behaviour strategies are effective in getting the participants to learn the content better. The duration in which we implemented the behaviour strategies are too short to determine the effectiveness of the behaviour strategies and see it play out.
The effectiveness of a token economy can only be properly determined after being carried out over a duration of at least 2 weeks. Similarly, negative reinforcement is deemed more effective only when it is implemented in the long-term (Hackenberg, 2009).
This can be seen during our roadshow. Shoot-o-lotto took a significantly longer time than the other games to play due to the addition of negative reinforcement, it caused a bottleneck effect. Hence, when it is crowded, the game was played without the negative reinforcement (gloves) to reduce the waiting time and bottleneck effect. Though this limits our ability to determine if the behaviour strategies are effective, I realised that despite not using the gloves, the participants scored similarly to the participants who were given negative reinforcement. Showing that the effectiveness of the reinforcement is insignificant, maybe due to the short implementation duration of the roadshow.
DID IT WORK?
I learned that taking initiative and being flexible and resilient when doing advocacy work is important.
All members in my group were tasked with a certain role, I was responsible for educating the participants about the ways to help PGs, Victoria with the cup-pong game, Wan Xuan with cards against gambling, Thaqifah with Shoot-o-lotto, Rui Yan with Prizes and evaluation and Daren with publicity and getting people to come to our booth.
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PERSONAL GROWTH
Despite being given a specific role to do, not everyone will be confident in carrying out their role.
Example, Daren was tasked to draw the crowd to our booth and publicise it to the people walking by, but Daren thought he only needed to shout in the microphone about where the roadshow is held and what it is about but his role entails him walking around and asking people that he did not know to come to the booth, something he is not prepared and is uncomfortable doing.
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Despite not wanting to, I took initiative and helped rally people to our booth even though I am busy educating the participants as there would be no participants at our booth if I do not do so. I felt really drained and two hours into the roadshow, I lost energy and enthusiasm, becoming restless and lazy in explaining the material which I felt affected the participant’s interest and ability when playing the games, which is largely my fault.
Additionally, crowding was an issue surrounding shoot-o-lotto as its time for a group to complete it which lead to a bottleneck effect. Thankfully, my group-mates suggested solutions like cutting out the negative reinforcement, getting the people waiting in line wear the gloves while waiting to prevent the bottleneck.
Why does it matter?
This learning matters because without taking initiative, many things would not be done and the booth might become messy and limit our ability to advocate for our cause.
Although I did take initiative, I need to pace myself and be resilient. I ended up tired and drained which made me lazy and unmotivated, while my other members especially Victoria was stilling staying energetic despite being tired. I feel like I have more to learn in that aspect from Victoria.
I also need to learn how to be more flexible, many of the changes done to help the booth flow better was initiated by Victoria and Wan Xuan, who pointed out the bottleneck problem and tried to fix it. I, however, did not have many ideas in fixing those issues and had to rely on them to solve the problem which I find is something I have to work on in the future when doing similar advocacy work.
CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
In light of this learning, in the future I will plan ahead and think of possible hiccups and solutions in the event that problems arise.
Additionally, I want to do more advocacy work on a larger scale to practice the skills I have learnt and to gain more experience in planning and executing such events.
I felt that I did not do enough and could do more in spreading awareness of problem gambling and if I were more enthusiastic or if the roadshow was held in a place where the participants were personally affected by PGs or are PGs themselves, that I would make a bigger impact.
However, I should not take lightly the work I did as It taught people who are unaware, ways to help PGs and allow them to help others when needed.
CONCLUSION
In all, the roadshow was an interesting experience. I am thankful that I got to try out advocacy work for the first time, gaining experience and discovering the limitations that I have. I would like moving forward to try doing more and involving myself in more events to raise awareness for a bigger cause. I am sincerely thankful for this opportunity and I hope that the work we did reach someone who needed it.
