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Some behaviors take a long time to change, and rarely do individuals progress immediately from awareness of a new product or idea to its use. Stages of change models document and specify the specific stages or steps a person goes through when they adopt or quit a behavior. At least four distinct stages of change models have been proposed: (1) diffusion of innovations ( Rogers 2005 ); (2) hierarchy of effects ( McGuire 1989 ); (3) steps to behavior change ( Piotrow et al., 1997 ); and (4) transtheoretical model ( Prochaska et al. 1992 ). Diffusion of innovations (→  Diffusion of Information and Innovation ; Rogers, Everett ) is a theory that describes how new ideas, opinions, attitudes, and behaviors spread throughout a community ( Rogers 2005 ). First developed by rural sociologists to study how farmers adopted new ideas, diffusion theory has grown into a robust science with applications in communications, health (→  Health Communication ), →  Marketing , sociology, and many other arenas. Diffusion theory has many components, one of which is that individuals pass through stages during the adoption process. These five stages were labeled: awareness , gaining knowledge of the new behavior; persuasion , learning more about it; decision , making a conscious decision to use it; implementation , first use and experimentation with it; and confirmation , continued use of the behavior ... log in or subscribe to read full text