A Behavior Change Model for Internet Interventions

By Lee M. Ritterband, Frances P. Thorndike, D. Cox, Boris P. Kovatchev, Linda Gonder-Frederick. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 2009

614 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BackgroundThe Internet has become a major component to health care and has important implications for the future of the health care system. One of the most notable aspects of the Web is its ability to provide efficient, interactive, and tailored content to the user. Given the wide reach and extensive capabilities of the Internet, researchers in behavioral medicine have been using it to develop and deliver interactive and comprehensive treatment programs with the ultimate goal of impacting patient behavior and reducing unwanted symptoms. To date, however, many of these interventions have not been grounded in theory or developed from behavior change models, and no overarching model to explain behavior change in Internet interventions has yet been published.PurposeThe purpose of this article is to propose a model to help guide future Internet intervention development and predict and explain behavior changes and symptom improvement produced by Internet interventions.ResultsThe model purports that effective Internet interventions produce (and maintain) behavior change and symptom improvement via nine nonlinear steps: the user, influenced by environmental factors, affects website use and adherence, which is influenced by support and website characteristics. Website use leads to behavior change and symptom improvement through various mechanisms of change. The improvements are sustained via treatment maintenance.ConclusionBy grounding Internet intervention research within a scientific framework, developers can plan feasible, informed, and testable Internet interventions, and this form of treatment will become more firmly established.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3169ab692c740033dd27072062234653932ff9b9

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Citations in the corpus

Supportive Accountability: A Model for Providing Human Support to Enhance Adherence to eHealth Interventions (2011, background): “While a wide variety of factors such as the design of the eHealth intervention and patient factors have been suggested as potential factors in adherence and attrition [1, 4], support provided by clinicians or coaches, via telephone, email, and chat rooms, has been shown across many treatment targets”
Measuring Engagement in eHealth and mHealth Behavior Change Interventions: Viewpoint of Methodologies (2018, background): “Assessing these constructs at different time points may be particularly fruitful, especially given the cyclical nature of behavior change [38].”
Effectiveness of Guided Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy in Regular Clinical Settings (2013, neutral): “…in purely clinical routine care settings whereas RCTs always involve more rigorous procedures. what makes ICBT work, and most papers on the topic have been based on ideas and impressions [Andersson et al., 2009b; Ritterband et al., 2009], including practice guidelines [Abbot et al., 2008].”
Putting the ‘app’ in Happiness: A Randomised Controlled Trial of a Smartphone-Based Mindfulness Intervention to Enhance Wellbeing (2016, background): “For example, while Ritterband et al. (2009) have developed a model of behaviour change for internet-based interventions, one cannot assume this will directly translate to the distinctive experience of smartphone users engaging with an application.”
Conceptualising engagement with digital behaviour change interventions: a systematic review using principles from critical interpretive synthesis (2016, methodology): “As the framework proposed by Ritterband and colleagues [29] and the ontology proposed by West and Michie [4] explicitly linked engagement to behaviour change, we drew on these to structure our conceptual framework, mapping the other existing frameworks onto it.”
Using the Internet to Promote Health Behavior Change: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Impact of Theoretical Basis, Use of Behavior Change Techniques, and Mode of Delivery on Efficacy (2010, background): “For example, navigational format (eg, the extent to which users are “tunnelled” to particular information vs given free choice [54]), entertainment value (eg, use of quizzes, stories, graphics), appearance (eg, color, layout, screen size [18]), and credibility (eg, the extent to which the website ci”
Increasing Physical Activity With Mobile Devices: A Meta-Analysis (2012, background): “Ritterband et al [41] have developed a behavior change model for Internet-based interventions that can be used to guide mobile interventions, given the similarities of the two platforms.”
The Behavioral Intervention Technology Model: An Integrated Conceptual and Technological Framework for eHealth and mHealth Interventions (2014, methodology): “Our BIT model extends the Ritterband model [5] by including the intentions of the developer and by increasing the level of granularity.”
Behavioral Intervention Technologies: Evidence review and recommendations for future research (2010, neutral): “) [24,69]; adding human support and adherence promotion via phone, e-mail or other media [4]; using incentives [70,71] and making resources more engaging through gaming elements [72].”