This document provides instructions for an article critique assignment on a public health intervention program. Students are asked to locate a peer-reviewed journal article describing a theoretically-based intervention addressing a public health issue. The critique must include: a brief summary of the theory used in the intervention; a summary of the intervention program and its results; an evaluation of how well the theory was applied in the intervention; and an assessment of the intervention's effectiveness and strengths/weaknesses. The critique should be less than 3 pages following APA style guidelines.

1. Select one of the body systems from the University of Phoenix
Material: Weekly Vocabulary Exercise: Body Systems. (My idea
is to talk about HPV)
Create a brochure, using the Brochure Builder, you could
present to high school students to encourage better health-
seeking behaviors.
Describe why this body system is vital to a healthy life, as well
as why you should take care of it.
Answer the following questions in your brochure:
1. What is the function of this major body system?
1. What role does it play in overall health?
1. What major organs comprise this body system?
1. What diseases can affect organs in this body system? What
are the effects of these diseases?
Include the following in your brochure:
1. Appropriate pictures, diagrams, and graphics that illustrate
your explanations
1. Appropriately cited references
VACCINATION DECISIONS
1
VACCINATION DECISIONS
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Vaccination Decisions
.

2. Vaccination Decisions
Introduction
The article ‘Risk Perception And Communication in
Vaccination Decisions: A Fuzzy-Trace Approach’ addresses a
process model used in making vaccination decisions in the
recent time; the era of Web 2.0. The author, Reyna explores the
fuzzy-trace theory that characterizes vaccination decisions in
terms of retrieval of values, application of the values to
representations (in context), dual mental representations (gist
and verbatim), and background knowledge. Extracting essential
gist or meaning of the vaccination messages is interrupted by
lack of knowledge. According to the author, the majority of the
population has a tendency to adopt the “feeling okay” status quo
option as a prevention decision. Additionally, psychological
evidence from other relevant prevention decisions including
cancer screening shows that a large percentage of the population
will present their decision options as being simple, categorical
gist. This provides a choice of taking up preventive behaviors
and a feeling-okay option. This paper critiques the various
sections of Reyna’s article including the theory of approach to
vaccinations and the intervention program towards the issue.
The Fuzzy-Trace Theory
According to Reyna, theories in science should have sound
empirical evidence and accommodate the relevant evidence
including the evidence that is generated from the laboratories.
The fuzzy-trace Theory retains the admirable and useful
features of the Schema Theory (Reyna, 2012). Specifically, the
fuzzy-trace theory makes predictions concerning decision
making, judgment, and memory and predicts on their
development in the various phases of life (from childhood to old

3. age). For research purposes, fuzzy-trace theory integrates
studies on gestalt theory, social judgment, neurobiology,
memory and cognition, psycholinguistics and emotion. In
obtaining initial measures and definitions of verbatim (surface
form, for instance, exact wording) and gist (essential meaning)
verbal information representations, the theory relies on
psycholinguistics. The concepts of verbatim and gist, however,
go beyond the verbal communication, and they include events,
images (such as graphs and pictures), numbers (such as
probabilities and risks).
According to the theory (fuzzy-trace), there are
assumptions that the meaningful inputs are encoded in two
forms in the memory: a gist representation (interpretation of
what happened) and a verbatim representation (what actually
happened) (Reyna, 2012). Unlike the earlier perceptions, gist
representations are not obtained from the verbatim. Instead, the
encoding of both representations is roughly parallel as an
individual perceives a stimulus. While several gist
representations that generally involve multiple representations
of similar information encoded by one person, verbatim
representations include memories for exact numbers and words.
People have fuzzy-processing preferences and rely on gist
rather than the verbatim representations on most occasions,
especially when the answers are not a must. The researcher
operationalizes the theoretical constructs to elaborate on the
processing preference of both representations. Gist
representations support intuitive processing that is generally
parallel, impressionistic and unconscious. On the other hand,
verbatim representations support analytical, precise, and
conscious processing. Compared to verbatim memory, gist
memory is less subjective and more stable to interference
(Wolfe & Reyna, 2010).
In summary, Reyna uses all the components of fuzzy-trace
theory and shows the existence of obstacles that inhibit good
decision for all the four aspects of the vaccination decisions
including knowledge, retrieval of values, representations, and

4. processing. Research indicates the presence of two types of
mental representations, verbatim and gist, into memory.
However, people rely on the gist representations for decisions
or judgments. Additionally, beliefs, background knowledge, and
the individual differences will influence the meanings that are
encoded.
Intervention Program
According to Reyna, anti-vaccine messages are the best
intervention for situations where people do not clearly
understand vaccination that is widespread. The intervention
program would also be applicable in situations of mysterious
adverse events that occur in a close contiguity to the
vaccination. Anti-vaccine messages are considered cost-
efficient since the messages reach massive populations within
the shortest time possible. The other intervention program that
is deemed fit for changing the health behavior is the extensive
discussions of salutary effects. Informing the public of the risks
of not vaccinating the community will change the people’s
perception on vaccination (Reyna, Estrada et al., 2011).
While anti-vaccine messages provide good grounds for
acquiring the background knowledge using the coherent stories
that are even supported by the narrative explanations, it has not
eliminated the issue of widespread lack of vaccination
information. The problem arises when people attempt to extract
meaning. According to the author, extracting meaning creates
the fertile grounds in which people are exposed to the
misleading explanations. In addition to inadequate knowledge,
the intervention program has not succeeded due to the people’s
negative ideas with prior plausibility; the belief that the
authorities are untrustworthy and thus the government programs
of vaccination (anti-vaccine messages) are meant to cause harm
to the population.
Furthermore, the program is made worse when people
experience adverse outcomes including autism, fibromyalgia,
and multiple sclerosis. Such adverse outcomes are poorly
understood and hence the negative attitude (Kata, 2010).

5. However, Reyna assures of anti-vaccine messages that satisfy
the people’s longing for clarity for the unexplained associations
and events shortly. Such improvements are likely to improve the
efficiency of the intervention and control the health issue.
References
Reyna, V. F. (May 28, 2012). Risk perception and
communication in vaccination decisions: a fuzzy-trace
theory approach. Vaccine. 30(25): 3790-3797. doi:
10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.11.070
Wolfe CR, Reyna VF. (2010). Semantic coherence and fallacies
in estimating joint probabilities. Journal of Behavioral
Decision Making. 23(2):203–223
Kata A. A postmodern Pandora's box: Anti-vaccination
misinformation on the internet. Vaccine. 2010;28:1709–
1716. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2009.12.022.
Reyna VF, Estrada SM, DeMarinis JA, Myers RM, Stanisz JM,
Mills BA. Neurobiological and memory models of risky
decision making in adolescents versus young adults. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition. 2011;37:1125–1142. doi: 10.1037/a0023943.

6. 1.You did not follow the instructions of the this paper in that
the instructions state that you find and critique an article that is
based on one of the theories or models discussed in class so
far. Without my knowledge of the theory you are presented, I
am unable to accurately assess your paper. In addition the
summary of the theory should be brief (1 paragraph), the major
components of the paper should be you evaluation of the
adequacy of which the theory/model was employed and the
strengths and weakness of the intervention in relation to the
theory/model. Make sure to review the detailed instructions on
the Word document posted under the Paper 1 assignment folder
in Blackboard before re-writing and re-submitting your paper.
Let me know if you have questions.
2.under Paper #1 titled ‘Article Critique—Detailed
Instructions’. It is a two page document. You may still do your
critique on an intervention article that involves vaccinations,
however, you need to make sure it uses one of the
theories/models we’ve discussed in class so far.
Public Health 8920 – Social and Behavioral Sciences in Public
Health
Paper #1: Article Critique:
To “gain experience in locating and critically evaluating social
and behavioral science research in order to better assess the
empirical support for intervention programs of different types”
this assignment requires that you locate, summarize, and
critically evaluate 1 article that meet the following criteria:
Your choosen article must:
(1) be from a peer-reviewed journal
(2) report on an intervention that

7. (3) addresses a public health issue
(4) and is based on one of the theories or models discussed in
class.
The issue can be any aspect of public health, for example:
infant nutrition, environmental lead, smoking cessation, AIDS
prevention, vaccinations, highway safety, tuberculosis control,
physical activity, etc.
By intervention I mean some program or campaign or
educational activity designed to change
(a) a determinant of health
(b) a health outcome, or
(c) a particular health behavior.
Thus, the article must go beyond a research study examining
aspects of these theories and models. It must report on a
theoretically-based intervention. An intervention could be a
program to improve sidewalks or parks in a city to increase
outdoor physical activity. An intervention could be a policy to
provide nutritional supplements to pregnant women to improve
newborn health outcomes. An intervention could be an
education and peer-support program to encourage smoking
cessation, or an advertising campaign to encourage physical
activity among adolescent girls.
Your critique should include:
• A brief introduction to the article: which theory or model did
the authors employ? What was the public health issue that was
addressed?
• A brief summary of the theory (in your own words). This
should be roughly one paragraph, and should demonstrate that
you understand the basics of that theory or model.
• A summary of the intervention program, including target
population, goals of the intervention, methods used to make the
desired change, and the results of the intervention.

8. • The two most important pieces of this critique will be:
1) Your evaluation of the adequacy with which the theory or
model was employed. For example, did the
researchers/practitioners use all components of the theory? Did
they operationalize (measure or create) theoretical constructs in
a way that was true to the theory?
2) Your evaluation of the success of the intervention. Did it
accomplish the intended goals? Could it have been improved in
any way? What were the particular strengths of this
intervention, or of this theoretical approach to the problem?
What drawbacks do you see?
Your article critique paper is worth 25 points. Follow all APA
guidelines (e.g., cover page, in-text citations, reference list).
The following website is a great resource to help you follow
APA guidelines:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Make sure to provide citations for any statement you make that
warrants a citation—when in doubt, cite! The reference for the
journal article used should be provided using the following APA
format:
Fredriksen-Goldsen, K. I. Kim, H., Barkan, S. E., Muraco, A.,
& Hoy-Ellis, C. P. (2013). Health disparities among lesbian,
gay, and bisexual older adults: Results from a population-based
study. American Journal of Public Health, 103(10), 1802-1809.
NOTE: Please keep your paper less than 3 pages and as double-
spaced with 1 inch margins via Word document. (APA,
formatting, citations is worth 10 points). When you have
completed your paper, please upload it to the appropriate
assignment folder on Blackboard via Turnitin.
Turnitin will provide you with feedback on % of paper

9. 'plagiarized', however, you are allowed to revised and resubmit
if prior to the due date. Less than 15% is required. I advise you
to submit your paper 24 hours before the due date so you have
time to revise and resubmit if need be. Below are links to
tutorials on using Tunitin:
Submitting a paper: http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-
training/submitting-a-paper
About originality check:
http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/about-
originalitycheck
Viewing originality reports:
http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/viewing-
originality-reports