A kitchen poster and emails helped students build a new cleaning habit
Who it’s about: Students
- HelpedHabits
With a kitchen poster and emails, the new habit felt more automatic than it did for the diary group.
- Rule: Put a visible cue where you'll do ittested
- Rule: Get a remindertested
- Action: Practise a kitchen hygiene habitused
Small randomised trial of 45 university students in Australia · vs the same sponge and unrelated diary emails · they rated themselves · ⚠ numbers unreliable
- No differenceHabits
For the group with an email every 3 days, the habit felt no more automatic than for the 5-day group.
- Rule: Get a remindertested
- Action: Practise a kitchen hygiene habitused
- Rule: Put a visible cue where you'll do itused
Small randomised trial of 45 university students in Australia · vs reminder emails every 5 days · they rated themselves · ⚠ numbers unreliable
- HelpedGoals
Poster and email groups cleaned the cloth on 9 to 11 more days, against 3 more for the diary group.
- Rule: Put a visible cue where you'll do ittested
- Rule: Get a remindertested
- Action: Practise a kitchen hygiene habitused
Small randomised trial of 45 university students in Australia · vs the same sponge and unrelated diary emails · they rated themselves · ⚠ numbers unreliable
- No differenceGoals
An email every 3 days got the cloth cleaned on no more days than an email every 5 days.
- Rule: Get a remindertested
- Action: Practise a kitchen hygiene habitused
- Rule: Put a visible cue where you'll do itused
Small randomised trial of 45 university students in Australia · vs reminder emails every 5 days · they rated themselves · ⚠ numbers unreliable
The study
Who took part
45 students at a university in Australia, about 23 on average (aged 18 to 50). 8 in 10 were women. None of them cleaned their dish cloth or sponge in the microwave at the start.
What they did
Two groups hung a poster at home. It showed how to clean a dish cloth or sponge by putting it in the microwave for 1 minute. For 3 weeks, one group got a reminder email every 3 days (15 people) and the other every 5 days (17 people). The last group (13 people) got the same sponge and emails that asked them to keep a breakfast diary.
What happened
At 3 weeks, the poster groups said the habit felt more automatic and did it on more days than the diary group. Email timing made no clear difference, and the diary group caught up on days three weeks later. So a lasting gap was not shown, and some of the paper's printed numbers have errors.
Source
Building habit strength: A pilot intervention designed to improve food-safety behavior (2014)
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodres.2014.09.027 (opens in a new tab)Tools in this study
Rule · where5
Put a visible cue where you'll do itA sticker, poster, object or wearable prompt at the point of action.
Action
Practise a kitchen hygiene habitDo a small food-safety routine at home, such as disinfecting the dishcloth or sponge.
