scholarly journals Scale up of behaviour change interventions: A rapid review of evidence and practice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander K Saeri ◽  
Peter Slattery ◽  
Morgan James Tear ◽  
Chiara Varazzani ◽  
Daniel Epstein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Scaling Up ◽  
Rapid Review ◽  
Behavioural Science ◽  
Overview Of Reviews ◽  
Behaviour Change Interventions ◽  
Public Purpose ◽  
Rigorous Research

Behaviour science has been applied for public value by more than 100 government and public purpose organisations worldwide. Much of this work has focused on evidence production through rigorous research design and theories of behaviour change.However, successfully tested interventions are not always scaled up to an entire population of interest, a new setting, or adapted to new target behaviours. Scaling up effective behaviour change interventions is often the true goal and often represents a challenge for government and research end-users working in behavioural science. We conducted a systematic search for an overview of reviews of scholarly evidence on scale up, and 11 practice interviews with behaviour science researchers and practitioners to identify the factors and activities that influence the scale up of behaviour change interventions. This work is aimed not only at uncovering the effectiveness of these activities but also at increasing the reach and impact of behaviour change interventions at scale.

scholarly journals Assessing scalability of an intervention: why, how and who?

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 544-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Zamboni ◽  
Joanna Schellenberg ◽  
Claudia Hanson ◽  
Ana Pilar Betran ◽  
Alexandre Dumont
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Complex Interventions ◽  
Scaling Up ◽  
Outcome Evaluation ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Assessment Process ◽  
Optimal Timing ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Rigorous Research

Abstract Public health interventions should be designed with scale in mind, and researchers and implementers must plan for scale-up at an early stage. Yet, there is limited awareness among researchers of the critical value of considering scalability and relatively limited empirical evidence on assessing scalability, despite emerging methodological guidance. We aimed to integrate scalability considerations in the design of a study to evaluate a multi-component intervention to reduce unnecessary caesarean sections in low- and middle-income countries. First, we reviewed and synthesized existing scale up frameworks to identify relevant dimensions and available scalability assessment tools. Based on these, we defined our scalability assessment process and adapted existing tools for our study. Here, we document our experience and the methodological challenges we encountered in integrating a scalability assessment in our study protocol. These include: achieving consensus on the purpose of a scalability assessment; and identifying the optimal timing of such an assessment, moving away from the concept of a one-off assessment at the start of a project. We also encountered tensions between the need to establish the proof of principle, and the need to design an innovation that would be fit-for-scale. Particularly for complex interventions, scaling up may warrant rigorous research to determine an efficient and effective scaling-up strategy. We call for researchers to better incorporate scalability considerations in pragmatic trials through greater integration of impact and process evaluation, more stringent definition and measurement of scale-up objectives and outcome evaluation plans that allow for comparison of effects at different stages of scale-up.

scholarly journals Specifying who delivers behaviour change interventions: development of an Intervention Source Ontology

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Emma Norris ◽  
Alison J. Wright ◽  
Janna Hastings ◽  
Robert West ◽  
Neil Boyt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Target Population ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
Ontology Development ◽  
Behaviour Change Intervention ◽  
Behavioural Science ◽  
Rater Reliability ◽  
Behaviour Change Interventions ◽  
Occupational Role ◽  
Key Steps

Background:  Identifying how behaviour change interventions are delivered, including by whom, is key to understanding intervention effectiveness. However, information about who delivers interventions is reported inconsistently in intervention evaluations, limiting communication and knowledge accumulation. This paper reports a method for consistent reporting: The Intervention Source Ontology. This forms one part of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology, which aims to cover all aspects of behaviour change interventions. Methods: The Intervention Source Ontology was developed following methods for ontology development and maintenance used in the Human Behaviour-Change Project, with seven key steps: 1) define the scope of the ontology, 2) identify key entities and develop their preliminary definitions by reviewing existing classification systems (top-down) and reviewing 100 behaviour change intervention reports (bottom-up), 3) refine the ontology by piloting the preliminary ontology on 100 reports, 4) stakeholder review by 34 behavioural science and public health experts, 5) inter-rater reliability testing of annotating intervention reports using the ontology, 6) specify ontological relationships between entities and 7) disseminate and maintain the Intervention Source Ontology. Results: The Intervention Source Ontology consists of 140 entities. Key areas of the ontology include Occupational Role of Source, Relatedness between Person Source and the Target Population, Sociodemographic attributes and Expertise. Inter-rater reliability was found to be 0.60 for those familiar with the ontology and 0.59 for those unfamiliar with it, levels of agreement considered ‘acceptable’. Conclusions: Information about who delivers behaviour change interventions can be reliably specified using the Intervention Source Ontology. For human-delivered interventions, the ontology can be used to classify source characteristics in existing behaviour change reports and enable clearer specification of intervention sources in reporting.

scholarly journals The Human Behaviour-Change Project: An artificial intelligence system to answer questions about changing behaviour

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Michie ◽  
James Thomas ◽  
Pol Mac Aonghusa ◽  
Robert West ◽  
Marie Johnston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Artificial Intelligence System ◽  
Behavioural Science ◽  
Behaviour Change Interventions ◽  
Intelligence System ◽  
Global Evidence

Changing behaviour is necessary to address many of the threats facing human populations.  However, identifying behaviour change interventions likely to be effective in particular contexts as a basis for improving them presents a major challenge. The Human Behaviour-Change Project harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and behavioural science to organise global evidence about behaviour change to predict outcomes in common and unknown behaviour change scenarios.

Scaling-up social enterprises: The effects of geographic context

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Doyle Corner ◽  
Kate Kearins
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
Dynamic Capabilities ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Scaling Up ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Geographic Context ◽  
Product Modification ◽  
Multicase Study ◽  
Geographical Context

AbstractSocial enterprises implement business-like approaches to address social problems. Scale-up of these enterprises beyond one geographical context can extend their impact to better match the scope of problems being addressed. Unfortunately, many social enterprises start but relatively few expand to new contexts, making scale-up one of the most important but least understood outcomes of social entrepreneurship. We explore this outcome empirically, extending existing research that is predominantly conceptual. The study adopts a multicase study research design. A dynamic capabilities framework reveals how resources are amassed and configured for expansion, a process that can be more difficult for social compared to commercial enterprises. Findings suggest scale-up may be a second act of social entrepreneurship because dissimilarities between initial and scale-up contexts necessitate product modification, different partnerships, and idiosyncratic resource configurations. We thus call into question existing literature’s focus on standardization – generic resource configurations – for scaling-up social enterprises to new geographical contexts.

Designing and implementing behaviour change interventions to improve population health

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 64-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Michie
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Population Health ◽  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Systematic Reviews ◽  
Change Theory ◽  
Behaviour Change Techniques ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Behavioural Science ◽  
Behaviour Change Interventions ◽  
Behaviour Change Theory

Improved population health depends on changing behaviour: of those who are healthy (e.g. stopping smoking), those who are ill (e.g. adhering to health advice) and those delivering health care. To design more effective behaviour change interventions, we need more investment in developing the scientific methods for studying behaviour change. Behavioural science is relevant to all phases of the process of implementing evidence-based health care: developing evidence through primary studies, synthesizing the findings in systematic reviews, translating evidence into guidelines and practice recommendations, and implementing these in practice. ‘Behaviour change: Implementation and Health’, the last research programme to be funded within the MRC HSRC, aimed to develop innovative ways of applying theories and techniques of behaviour change to understand and improve the implementation of evidence-based practice, as a key step to improving health. It focused on four areas of study that apply behaviour change theory: • defining and developing a taxonomy of behaviour change techniques to allow replication of studies and the possibility of accumulating evidence; • conducting systematic reviews, by categorizing and synthesizing interventions on the basis of behaviour change theory; • investigating the process by which evidence is translated into guideline recommendations for practice; • developing a theoretical framework to apply to understanding implementation problems and designing interventions. This work will contribute to advancing the science of behaviour change by providing tools for conceptualizing and defining intervention content, and linking techniques of behaviour change to their theoretical base.

Smoking status and attractiveness among identical twins discordant for smoking

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Skinner ◽  
Andy ◽  
Ian Penton-Voak ◽  
Marcus Robert Munafo
Keyword(s):  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Smoking Status ◽  
Smoking Behaviour ◽  
Identical Twins ◽  
Facial Appearance ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Facial Aging ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Separate Sample ◽  
Behaviour Change Interventions

Background and aims: Smoking is associated with negative health of skin and increased signs of facial aging. We aimed to address two questions about smoking and appearance: 1) how does smoking affect the attractiveness of faces, and 2) does facial appearance alone provide an indication of smoking status?Methods: Faces of identical twins discordant for smoking were averaged to make male and female smoking and non-smoking prototypes faces. In Task 1, we presented same sex smoking and non-smoking prototypes side-by-side and participants (n=590) indicated which face was more attractive. Participants were blind to prototype smoking status. In Task 2 a separate sample (n=580) indicated which prototype was the smoker.Results: In Task 1 both male and female participants judged non-smoking prototypes more attractive, irrespective of the sex of the prototype face. In Task 2, both male and female participants selected the smoking prototype as the smoker more often, again irrespective of the sex of the prototype face.Conclusions: Our findings provide evidence that smoking may negatively impact facial appearance, and that facial appearance alone may be sufficient to indicate smoking status. We discuss the possible use of these findings in smoking behaviour change interventions.

scholarly journals The characteristics of behaviour change interventions used among Pacific people: a systematic search and narrative synthesis

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amio Matenga-Ikihele ◽  
Judith McCool ◽  
Rosie Dobson ◽  
Fuafiva Fa’alau ◽  
Robyn Whittaker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Support ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Health Behaviour ◽  
Narrative Synthesis ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
Behaviour Change Interventions ◽  
Pacific People ◽  
The Pacific

Abstract Background Pacific people living in New Zealand, Australia, United States, and the Pacific region continue to experience a disproportionately high burden of long-term conditions, making culturally contextualised behaviour change interventions a priority. The primary aim of this study was to describe the characteristics of behaviour change interventions designed to improve health and effect health behaviour change among Pacific people. Methods Electronic searches were carried out on OVID Medline, PsycINFO, PubMed, Embase and SCOPUS databases (initial search January 2019 and updated in January 2020) for studies describing an intervention designed to change health behaviour(s) among Pacific people. Titles and abstracts of 5699 papers were screened; 201 papers were then independently assessed. A review of full text was carried out by three of the authors resulting in 208 being included in the final review. Twenty-seven studies were included, published in six countries between 1996 and 2020. Results Important characteristics in the interventions included meaningful partnerships with Pacific communities using community-based participatory research and ensuring interventions were culturally anchored and centred on collectivism using family or social support. Most interventions used social cognitive theory, followed by popular behaviour change techniques instruction on how to perform a behaviour and social support (unspecified). Negotiating the spaces between Eurocentric behaviour change constructs and Pacific worldviews was simplified using Pacific facilitators and talanoa. This relational approach provided an essential link between academia and Pacific communities. Conclusions This systematic search and narrative synthesis provides new and important insights into potential elements and components when designing behaviour change interventions for Pacific people. The paucity of literature available outside of the United States highlights further research is required to reflect Pacific communities living in New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific region. Future research needs to invest in building research capacity within Pacific communities, centering self-determining research agendas and findings to be led and owned by Pacific communities.

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