Unit 1: Foundations of Applied Behavioral Science

Let’s talk about how to actually do applied behavioral science using the SIDE method, a tested and proven scientific method.

SIDE stands for:

• Strategy – articulating who will be doing what when you’re successful (and how you’ll know it is happening)
• Insights – observing the current state of the behavior and understanding why people are or are not doing it
• Design – using those insights to discover potential ways to change the current behaviors
• Evaluation – testing those interventions to generate evidence about their costs and benefits so a scale decision can be made

Considered end-to-end, SIDE helps you articulate the behavior you want to change and then find potential ways to change it.