Abstract

College students experience an increased prevalence of anxiety and stress. Their coping behaviors may affect their health and lifestyle choices, such as addiction to social media, unhealthy food choices, and lack of physical activity. Strategies for changing one’s lifestyle choices include mechanisms of behavior change using a self-monitoring method. Mechanisms required for a successful behavior change include self-efficacy or intrinsic motivation, behavior skill building, social reinforcement, and self-awareness. Expressive reflective journaling has been successful in wellness programs and may be effective as a method for self-monitoring one’s behavior change progress. Handwriting is an executive action that is controlled by pre-frontal cognitive function, which is responsible for decision-making and critical thinking, thus may increase the likelihood of sustaining adopted behaviors. Therefore, expressive hand-writing journaling may help students in understanding the motivations behind their behaviors during their progress. Seventy-seven students enrolled in two health maintenance courses at a large four-year public university in California participated in an eight-week behavior change assignment with a hand-writing journaling and non-journaling as methods of self-monitoring. This qualitative exploratory study analyzed student narratives of the self-evaluation questionnaire that was administered at the end of the assignment. Journaling students were more likely to express self-efficacy/intrinsic motivation and self-awareness. In comparison, non-journaling students expressed the need for social reinforcement. Hand-written journaling promotes self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation, thus may be beneficial as a self-monitoring strategy in sustaining behavior change.