Behaviour change interventions: getting in touch with individual differences, values and emotions
Behaviour change interventions: getting in touch with individual differences, values and emotions
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses suggest that behaviour change interventions have modest effect sizes, struggle to demonstrate effect in the long term and that there is high heterogeneity between studies. Such interventions take huge effort to design and run for relatively small returns in terms of changes to behaviour. So why do behaviour change interventions not work and how can we make them more effective? This article offers some ideas about what may underpin the failure of behaviour change interventions. We propose three main reasons that may explain why our current methods of conducting behaviour change interventions struggle to achieve the changes we expect: 1) our current model for testing the efficacy or effectiveness of interventions tends to a mean effect size. This ignores individual differences in response to interventions; 2) our interventions tend to assume that everyone values health in the way we do as health professionals; and 3) the great majority of our interventions focus on addressing cognitions as mechanisms of change. We appeal to people's logic and rationality rather than recognising that much of what we do and how we behave, including our health behaviours, is governed as much by how we feel and how engaged we are emotionally as it is with what we plan and intend to do. Drawing on our team's experience of developing multiple interventions to promote and support health behaviour change with a variety of populations in different global contexts, this article explores strategies with potential to address these issues.
Adolescents, behaviour change, diet and physical activity, interventions, motivation, women
589-598
Strommer, Sofia
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Lawrence, Wendy
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Shaw, Sarah
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Correia Simao, Sara
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Jenner, Sarah
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Barrett, Millie
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Vogel, Christina
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Hardy-Johnson, Polly
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Farrell, David
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Woods-Townsend, Kathryn
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Baird, Janis
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Morrison, Leanne
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Sloboda, Deborah M.
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Inskip, Hazel
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Barker, Mary
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1 December 2020
Strommer, Sofia
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Lawrence, Wendy
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Shaw, Sarah
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Correia Simao, Sara
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Jenner, Sarah
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Barrett, Millie
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Vogel, Christina
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Hardy-Johnson, Polly
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Farrell, David
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Woods-Townsend, Kathryn
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Baird, Janis
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Morrison, Leanne
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Sloboda, Deborah M.
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Inskip, Hazel
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Barker, Mary
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Strommer, Sofia, Lawrence, Wendy, Shaw, Sarah, Correia Simao, Sara, Jenner, Sarah, Barrett, Millie, Vogel, Christina, Hardy-Johnson, Polly, Farrell, David, Woods-Townsend, Kathryn, Baird, Janis, Morrison, Leanne, Sloboda, Deborah M., Inskip, Hazel and Barker, Mary
(2020)
Behaviour change interventions: getting in touch with individual differences, values and emotions.
Journal of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, 11 (6), .
(doi:10.1017/S2040174420000604).
Abstract
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses suggest that behaviour change interventions have modest effect sizes, struggle to demonstrate effect in the long term and that there is high heterogeneity between studies. Such interventions take huge effort to design and run for relatively small returns in terms of changes to behaviour. So why do behaviour change interventions not work and how can we make them more effective? This article offers some ideas about what may underpin the failure of behaviour change interventions. We propose three main reasons that may explain why our current methods of conducting behaviour change interventions struggle to achieve the changes we expect: 1) our current model for testing the efficacy or effectiveness of interventions tends to a mean effect size. This ignores individual differences in response to interventions; 2) our interventions tend to assume that everyone values health in the way we do as health professionals; and 3) the great majority of our interventions focus on addressing cognitions as mechanisms of change. We appeal to people's logic and rationality rather than recognising that much of what we do and how we behave, including our health behaviours, is governed as much by how we feel and how engaged we are emotionally as it is with what we plan and intend to do. Drawing on our team's experience of developing multiple interventions to promote and support health behaviour change with a variety of populations in different global contexts, this article explores strategies with potential to address these issues.
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StrommerS_Behavioural change interventions_Main_Manuscript_revised
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Accepted/In Press date: 31 May 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 28 July 2020
Published date: 1 December 2020
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
This paper/article/abstract presents independent research from EACH-B funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research Programme (Reference No. RP-PG-0216-20004). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The TALENT study was funded by a Global Challenges Research Fund/Medical Research Council pump priming grant (grant no.: MC_PC_MR/R018545/1). The funding agency was not involved in the study design, data analysis or writing of this article. The SPRING study was funded by grants from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, Medical Research Council (MR_UU_12011/1) (MR_UU_12011/4) (MR/N011848/1) (MC_U147585819) (MC_UP_A620_1014) (MC_U105960371), British Heart Foundation (RG/07/009/23120), Arthritis Research UK(17702) (21231), Department of Health (HTA/10/33/04), Danone Nutricia Early Life Nutrition, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, NIHR Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit, University of Oxford and the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013), projects Early Nutrition and ODIN under grant agreements numbers 289346 and613977.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2020.
Keywords:
Adolescents, behaviour change, diet and physical activity, interventions, motivation, women
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Local EPrints ID: 441298
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/441298
PURE UUID: ce6e8a50-d0cd-4ca3-9e70-d0eca3448a6b
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Date deposited: 09 Jun 2020 16:30
Last modified: 10 Apr 2024 04:07
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Author:
Sara Correia Simao
Author:
Sarah Jenner
Author:
Millie Barrett
Author:
Polly Hardy-Johnson
Author:
David Farrell
Author:
Deborah M. Sloboda
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