Crystal Smit

Evaluation of the Motivation Process 5 101 extensively tested in two pilot studies (Franken et al., 2018; Smit et al., 2016). One week after the training, a half-hour follow-up training session took place at school. This follow-up session provided the research assistants with the opportunity to offer visible support to the influence agents, resolve any problems experienced by the influence agents, and refresh the core topics discussed in the initial training. In the following sections, we describe how the training implemented self-determination theory-based techniques to motivate influence agents to drink more water and support them in motivating their peers to drink water (a detailed overview of all training materials is available upon request). Motivating Influence Agents to Drink More Water Themselves The first part of the Share H 2 O training focused on motivating the influence agents to increase their own water consumption. To achieve this, we implemented two self-determination theory-based techniques in the training: providing meaningful rationales for drinking water and prompting the influence agents to self-initiate the target behavior (Gillison et al., 2019; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Teixeira et al., 2020). The technique of providing meaningful rationales for drinking water highlights and reinforces personally meaningful and valuable rationales that could form the basis for intrinsic motivation (Gillison et al., 2019; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Teixeira et al., 2020). Research has shown that even with a boring task, meaningful rationales can lead to internalization (Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, & Leone, 1994). This technique was implemented in the training by discussing the benefits of drinking water. First, all influence agents were asked to brainstorm about the benefits by working together on a word web (see Figure 5.1). This allowed them to learnmeaningful and valuable benefits from their peers—to which children at this age are highly susceptible (Steinberg & Monahan, 2007). Subsequently, the trainers supplemented these benefits through an interactive presentation which included a range of health (e.g., “Water does not contain sugar” and “Water is the best thirst quencher”) and environmental benefits (e.g., “Drinking water is good for the animals and the nature”) for drinking water. The presentation also included quiz questions in which the influence agents learned, for example, that the recommendation is to drink