Social ecology, human behavior and social change

Individual and group responses to programs of planned social change are discussed from a social ecological perspective. Social ecology is defined in terms of how peoples' beliefs and ideas are related to behavior in response to organized efforts at individual, group and societal change. Health educators must understand how people organize and reorganize their social knowledge of the world, including how they define the world, how they interpret the meaning of events in their lives, how they determine their courses of action and how they ultimately choose to act.