Theories of behaviour and behaviour change across the social and behavioural sciences: a scoping review

By Rachel Davis, R. Campbell, Z. Hildon, L. Hobbs, Susan Michie. Health Psychology Review, 2014

1,247 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Interventions to change health-related behaviours typically have modest effects and may be more effective if grounded in appropriate theory. Most theories applied to public health interventions tend to emphasise individual capabilities and motivation, with limited reference to context and social factors. Intervention effectiveness may be increased by drawing on a wider range of theories incorporating social, cultural and economic factors that influence behaviour. The primary aim of this paper is to identify theories of behaviour and behaviour change of potential relevance to public health interventions across four scientific disciplines: psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics. We report in detail the methodology of our scoping review used to identify these theories including which involved a systematic search of electronic databases, consultation with a multidisciplinary advisory group, web searching, searching of reference lists and hand searching of key behavioural science journals. Of secondary interest we developed a list of agreed criteria for judging the quality of the theories. We identified 82 theories and 9 criteria for assessing theory quality. The potential relevance of this wide-ranging number of theories to public health interventions and the ease and usefulness of evaluating the theories in terms of the quality criteria are however yet to be determined.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f6f88a3ae2e21ef6bbd87db0a96a67ec73971cd3

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In Applied Psychology

In General Health Professions

Citations in the corpus

Behavioral change for the circular economy: A review with focus on electronic waste management in the EU (2020, background): “And even when such initiatives are taken, not having a thorough understanding of user behaviors and the science behind behavioral interventions may lead to poor application with disappointing results and loss of resources used in the initiative (Davis et al., 2015).”
IDEAS (Integrate, Design, Assess, and Share): A Framework and Toolkit of Strategies for the Development of More Effective Digital Interventions to Change Health Behavior (2016, background): “To maximize the potential efficacy of interventions to change health behavior, those who design interventions should have an understanding of theory or the hypothesized mechanisms underlying human behavior and behavior change [16].”
Effects of Brief Mindfulness-Based Interventions on Health-Related Outcomes: a Systematic Review (2019, background): “…the mindfulness approach (e.g., acceptance or compassion), these interventions are commonly packaged as a quick and easy self-management tool and are backed by evidence that even small behavior changes can impact complex health outcomes (Davis et al. 2015; Hill et al. 2003; Stroebele et al. n.d.).”
A guide to using the Theoretical Domains Framework of behaviour change to investigate implementation problems (2017, background): “Eighty-three theories of behaviour and behaviour change have recently been identified in a review across disciplines in social and behavioural sciences [22].”
The Human Behaviour-Change Project: harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning for evidence synthesis and interpretation (2017, background): “[32] Behaviour Change Intervention (BCI) A product, service, activity or structural change, intended to achieve behaviour change.”