Methods for strengthening evaluation and implementation: specifying components of behaviour change interventions

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Improving health depends largely on changing behaviour, whether this is ?lifestyle? behaviours, e.g. smoking and physical activity, ?illness? behaviours, e.g. taking prescribed medication, or ?health care? behaviours, e.g. hospital staff washing their hands. Money is being invested in research aimed at developing interventions to change such behaviours. These interventions are usually complex but often described in very general terms that do not give information about the content, e.g. ?behavioural counselling? or ?stress management?. If the content of interventions cannot be clearly agreed and understood, then, even if an intervention works very well, it would be very difficult to ensure that we can implement the successful intervention in the NHS. In medicine, we require interventions to be defined precisely, e.g. the chemicals in drugs, their dose and frequency. We need to be just as precise for interventions to change behaviour if we want to improve patient and public health. This research will enable behavioural scientists to accumulate more evidence about what works (as well as what does not work and is a waste of money) and how interventions work. It will enable health practitioners to deliver more effective interventions, and avoid harmful interventions being delivered by the NHS. This research aims to develop a scientific method for describing interventions to change behaviour by defining the specific techniques used (e.g. goal setting or use of rewards). We are already aware of over 100 techniques, but it is not clear which of these are the same, different or overlapping techniques. The research will involve groups of experts from a variety of backgrounds producing clear and reliable definitions for each technique for use by practitioners and researchers. This includes reporting interventions in research reports, synthesising research findings in systematic reviews, and delivering interventions, for example, to help people stop smoking or health professionals to provide high quality health care. The research will deliver a web-based resource comprising a handbook of clearly defined and agreed techniques and a training tool. We predict that this will be an invaluable tool for all those wanting to develop interventions to change behaviours to improve health, and for health practitioners working in the NHS.