A PSY 108 Project Three action plan applying psychological principles to a sleep-disrupting phone habit, with a SMART goal, a table of actions and principles, if-then plans for obstacles, tracking and evaluation, and a reflection, in APA style. Searches like "psy 108 module 8 assignment", "psy108 module 8 project three action plan" and "psy 108 module 8 example" land here.
The PSY 108 Module 8 example, in full
Project Three: An Eight-Week Action Plan for Putting the Phone Down and Getting to Sleep
[Student Name]
Southern New Hampshire University
PSY 108: Introduction to Psychology
Module Eight Project Three
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.
Project Three: An Eight-Week Action Plan for Putting the Phone Down and Getting to Sleep
The Problem in Brief
Project Two examined a problem that belongs to Dana, the composite working parent and first-term online student used throughout this course. After finishing her studying at about 11:30 p.m., she takes her phone to bed and scrolls for close to an hour, so she averages only about five and a half hours of sleep on weeknights and wakes feeling unrested. Her two-week diary showed that she falls asleep quickly once the phone is down. The research reviewed in Project Two suggested that the habit is maintained by unpredictable rewards and by the bed itself acting as a cue, that it may also protect the only personal time in her day and that habit change takes weeks rather than days. This plan applies those findings.
The Goal
Written to SMART standards, the goal reads: on at least four of five weeknights, Dana will have her phone charging outside the bedroom and her lights out by 11:45 p.m., raising her average weeknight sleep from about 5.5 hours to at least 6.75 hours within eight weeks, with morning restedness above 3 on her 1-to-5 scale. Seven or more hours, the lower end of the range recommended for adults her age (Hirshkowitz et al., 2015), is the longer-term target once the new routine is stable. The goal is set at four nights rather than five so that an occasional late night does not count as failure.
The Action Plan
Table 1 lists the actions, the psychological principle behind each and when it happens.
Table 1
Action Plan With Supporting Principles
| Action | Psychological principle | When |
|---|---|---|
| Charge the phone on the kitchen counter; use a basic alarm clock | Stimulus control: remove the cue and the reward from the bedroom | From week 1, every night |
| If-then plan: when I close my laptop, I plug in my phone in the kitchen | Implementation intention linking a cue to the new behavior | Every study night |
| Fifteen minutes of personal time at 9:00 p.m., phone allowed, in the living room | Protects the need for personal time earlier in the evening | Weeknights |
| Wind-down routine in bed: a printed book or a short audio story | Replacement behavior that is pleasant but ends naturally | Nightly after lights dimmed |
| Weekend wake time no more than 90 minutes later than weekdays | Consistent schedule supports the sleep rhythm | Saturdays and Sundays |
| Partner checks in each Sunday on the diary | Social support and accountability | Weekly |
| Replace "I have no willpower" with "I am changing a habit" | Cognitive reframing of the problem | Whenever a slip happens |
Note. Composite plan for the example student.
Why These Actions
The first two actions change the situation rather than relying on resolve. Behavioral psychology suggests that the bed has become a cue for scrolling and that scrolling is reinforced on an unpredictable schedule. Removing the phone from the bedroom takes away both the cue and the reward at the moment Dana is most tired and least able to resist. The if-then plan fills the gap with a specific action tied to a reliable moment, closing the laptop. Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) found that plans in this form substantially improved goal attainment across many studies, largely because the situation itself starts the behavior without a new decision each night.
The third and fourth actions address the reason behind the habit. Project Two concluded that the phone time may be Dana's only personal time, and removing it without a replacement would likely fail. Moving some of that time earlier protects it, and the wind-down routine gives her something enjoyable in bed that, unlike a video feed, reaches a natural end. The plan does not ask Dana to give up time for herself; it moves that time to where it no longer costs her sleep.
The last three actions support the change over time. A steadier weekend wake time prevents the Sunday-night problem the diary revealed. Weekly check-ins with her partner draw on social support, which earlier projects showed can buffer stress and help people persist. Reframing slips as part of habit change, rather than as proof of weak willpower, keeps one late night from turning into abandoning the plan.
Planning for Obstacles
Several obstacles are predictable, so the plan includes an if-then response for each. If a child wakes during the night and Dana wants to check the time, she will use the alarm clock, not the phone. If an assignment runs late, she will still plug in the phone in the kitchen before bed, even if lights-out is later than 11:45 p.m. If she wants to check a message from a family member, she will do it in the kitchen and leave the phone there. If she misses two nights in a row, she and her partner will look at the diary together on Sunday to see what got in the way, rather than restarting from scratch.
Tracking and Evaluation
Dana will continue the same diary used for the baseline, recording time in bed, phone location, estimated sleep and morning restedness, so the before-and-after comparison is fair. Each Sunday she will note how many weeknights met the goal. Eight weeks is deliberate: in a real-world study of habit building, the typical participant needed a little over two months before a new daily action ran on autopilot, some took far longer, and a skipped day here and there made little difference to the end result (Lally et al., 2010). At the end of eight weeks, the plan will be judged on three measures: nights meeting the goal, average weeknight sleep and restedness. Because general sleep hygiene advice has mixed evidence when applied broadly (Irish et al., 2015), Dana will also note which actions she actually used, so she can keep what helped and drop what did not.
Expected Benefits
If the plan works, the gains should reach beyond feeling rested. Research on students links adequate sleep with better academic performance and mood (Hershner & Chervin, 2014), and in earlier projects Dana's short sleep was connected to her irritability, stress and difficulty concentrating. An extra hour or more of sleep on weeknights is one of the most direct changes available to her, and it costs nothing.
Reflection on Applying Psychology
Working through this problem changed how it is understood. At the start, Dana described herself as lacking willpower, an explanation that offered no path forward. Psychology reframed the problem as a learned habit maintained by cues, rewards and an unmet need for personal time, and each part of that explanation suggested something she could change. The same approach applies well beyond sleep: measuring a problem before trying to fix it, looking for the situation that triggers a behavior, planning specific responses and expecting change to take weeks rather than days. That shift, from blaming character to understanding behavior, is the most useful thing this course has offered.
References
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
Hershner, S. D., & Chervin, R. D. (2014). Causes and consequences of sleepiness among college students. Nature and Science of Sleep, 6, 73-84. https://doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S62907
Hirshkowitz, M., Whiton, K., Albert, S. M., Alessi, C., Bruni, O., DonCarlos, L., Hazen, N., Herman, J., Katz, E. S., Kheirandish-Gozal, L., Neubauer, D. N., O'Donnell, A. E., Ohayon, M., Peever, J., Rawding, R., Sachdeva, R. C., Setters, B., Vitiello, M. V., Ware, J. C., & Adams Hillard, P. J. (2015). National Sleep Foundation's sleep time duration recommendations: Methodology and results summary. Sleep Health, 1(1), 40-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010
Irish, L. A., Kline, C. E., Gunn, H. E., Buysse, D. J., & Hall, M. H. (2015). The role of sleep hygiene in promoting public health: A review of empirical evidence. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 22, 23-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2014.10.001
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
How this PSY 108 Module 8 example is structured
The plan restates the problem and baseline in one paragraph, then sets the goal. A table lists each action with the principle behind it and when it happens, and the following sections explain the reasoning. Obstacles are handled as if-then plans, tracking uses the same diary as the baseline, and the reflection explains what applying psychology changed about how the problem is understood.
Get PSY 108 Module 8 written to your instructions
Send your PSY 108 Project Three guidelines and rubric together with Project Two. An action plan applying psychological principles to your chosen problem comes back within 24 to 48 hours; the first is free. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Southern New Hampshire University document.
PSY 108 Module 8 questions, answered
What does PSY 108 Project Three require?
Project Three usually asks students to develop an action plan that uses psychological concepts, theories and research to address the problem chosen in Project Two, explaining how each step applies psychology and how success will be judged.
What is stimulus control?
Stimulus control is a behavioral principle that behavior comes to be triggered by cues in the environment. Changing or removing the cues that prompt an unwanted behavior, or strengthening cues for a desired one, can change behavior more reliably than willpower alone.
What is an implementation intention?
An implementation intention is a specific plan that links a situation to a response, in the form "when X happens, I will do Y." Research has found such plans make people more likely to follow through on goals than general intentions.