Assessing a Goal-Setting Intervention for Promoting Adolescent Oral Health: An Exploratory Case Study

In this chapter, I explore a goal-setting intervention aimed at improving adolescents’ oral health, incorporating insights from participatory design, salutogenesis and hope theory, and goal-setting approach. The intervention, a goal-setting card, was tested as part of a school-based intervention, reflecting collaborative efforts between adolescents and dental professionals. The intervention was tested and evaluated with 76 adolescents from 8 and 10th grades. We assessed the intervention through observations of the tests, focus group interviews after the test and two months after the test, and real-time feedback at the end of the tests. The study highlights the steps in developing the goal-setting intervention in promoting adolescent oral health and identifies areas for further development. While recognizing the significance of goal setting, in this chapter, I explain various obstacles faced in testing the intervention in this age group. These challenges, as detailed in the discussion, contain multiple aspects of the intervention process and adolescent behavior.