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The person-based approach to intervention development: application to digital health-related behavior change interventions

The person-based approach to intervention development: application to digital health-related behavior change interventions
The person-based approach to intervention development: application to digital health-related behavior change interventions
This paper describes an approach that we have evolved for developing successful digital interventions to help people manage their health or illness. We refer to this as the “person-based” approach to highlight the focus on understanding and accommodating the perspectives of the people who will use the intervention. While all intervention designers seek to elicit and incorporate the views of target users in a variety of ways, the person-based approach offers a distinctive and systematic means of addressing the user experience of intended behavior change techniques in particular and can enhance the use of theory-based and evidence-based approaches to intervention development. There are two key elements to the person-based approach. The first is a developmental process involving qualitative research with a wide range of people from the target user populations, carried out at every stage of intervention development, from planning to feasibility testing and implementation. This process goes beyond assessing acceptability, usability, and satisfaction, allowing the intervention designers to build a deep understanding of the psychosocial context of users and their views of the behavioral elements of the intervention. Insights from this process can be used to anticipate and interpret intervention usage and outcomes, and most importantly to modify the intervention to make it more persuasive, feasible, and relevant to users. The second element of the person-based approach is to identify “guiding principles” that can inspire and inform the intervention development by highlighting the distinctive ways that the intervention will address key context-specific behavioral issues. This paper describes how to implement the person-based approach, illustrating the process with examples of the insights gained from our experience of carrying out over a thousand interviews with users, while developing public health and illness management interventions that have proven effective in trials involving tens of thousands of users.
person-based approach, internet, qualitative research, evaluation studies, fasibility studies, health promotion, patient education, professional education, behavior change
1438-8871
e30
Yardley, Lucy
64be42c4-511d-484d-abaa-f8813452a22e
Morrison, Leanne
920a4eda-0f9d-4bd9-842d-6873b1afafef
Bradbury, Katherine
87fce0b9-d9c5-42b4-b041-bffeb4430863
Muller, Ingrid
2569bf42-51bd-40da-bbfd-dd4dbbd62cad
Yardley, Lucy
64be42c4-511d-484d-abaa-f8813452a22e
Morrison, Leanne
920a4eda-0f9d-4bd9-842d-6873b1afafef
Bradbury, Katherine
87fce0b9-d9c5-42b4-b041-bffeb4430863
Muller, Ingrid
2569bf42-51bd-40da-bbfd-dd4dbbd62cad

Yardley, Lucy, Morrison, Leanne, Bradbury, Katherine and Muller, Ingrid (2015) The person-based approach to intervention development: application to digital health-related behavior change interventions. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 17 (1), e30. (doi:10.2196/jmir.4055). (PMID:25639757)

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper describes an approach that we have evolved for developing successful digital interventions to help people manage their health or illness. We refer to this as the “person-based” approach to highlight the focus on understanding and accommodating the perspectives of the people who will use the intervention. While all intervention designers seek to elicit and incorporate the views of target users in a variety of ways, the person-based approach offers a distinctive and systematic means of addressing the user experience of intended behavior change techniques in particular and can enhance the use of theory-based and evidence-based approaches to intervention development. There are two key elements to the person-based approach. The first is a developmental process involving qualitative research with a wide range of people from the target user populations, carried out at every stage of intervention development, from planning to feasibility testing and implementation. This process goes beyond assessing acceptability, usability, and satisfaction, allowing the intervention designers to build a deep understanding of the psychosocial context of users and their views of the behavioral elements of the intervention. Insights from this process can be used to anticipate and interpret intervention usage and outcomes, and most importantly to modify the intervention to make it more persuasive, feasible, and relevant to users. The second element of the person-based approach is to identify “guiding principles” that can inspire and inform the intervention development by highlighting the distinctive ways that the intervention will address key context-specific behavioral issues. This paper describes how to implement the person-based approach, illustrating the process with examples of the insights gained from our experience of carrying out over a thousand interviews with users, while developing public health and illness management interventions that have proven effective in trials involving tens of thousands of users.

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Published date: 30 January 2015
Keywords: person-based approach, internet, qualitative research, evaluation studies, fasibility studies, health promotion, patient education, professional education, behavior change
Organisations: Psychology

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 374000
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/374000
ISSN: 1438-8871
PURE UUID: 8874bb02-0d03-443e-839e-d16a9378b75e
ORCID for Lucy Yardley: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3853-883X
ORCID for Leanne Morrison: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-9961-551X
ORCID for Katherine Bradbury: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5513-7571
ORCID for Ingrid Muller: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9341-6133

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Date deposited: 04 Feb 2015 11:43
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:35

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