Assessing treatment-as-usual provided to control groups in adherence trials: Exploring the use of an open-ended questionnaire for identifying behaviour change techniques

Abstract

This study suggests that the TAU open-ended questionnaire is a feasible and reliable tool to capture active content of support provided to control participants in a multicentre adherence intervention trial. Considerable variability in the number of BCTs provided to control patients was observed, illustrating the importance of reliably collecting and accurately reporting control group support.

Essential considerations in developing attention control groups in behavioral research

“…suggested using an open-ended questionnaire for identifying behavior change techniques to assess treatment-as-usual (control groups; Oberje, Dima, Pijnappel, Prins, & de Bruin, 2015), as standard of care Table 2). AC received a stroke brochure.…”

“…This can even the playing field with respect to time and effort, address healthcare provider, and/or participant concerns with randomization, and justify randomization with the potential for benefit with assignment to either treatment group. Some researchers have suggested using an open‐ended questionnaire for identifying behavior change techniques to assess treatment‐as‐usual (control groups; Oberje, Dima, Pijnappel, Prins, & de Bruin, ), as standard of care has considerable variation, is reported with little or no details, and can potentially affect study outcomes (Ayling, Brierley, Johnson, Heller, & Eiser, ).…”

Behavior change techniques in health professional training: developing a coding tool

“…There is evidence to suggest that health service interventions lacking in theoretical underpinning can hamper the translation of research into practice, affecting the design, success, replicability and improvement of interventions [6]. Furthermore, interventions which are lacking in comprehensive description also impact negatively on replicability, evaluation, implementation and improvement [7]. If we accept that healthcare professional practice is made up of a series of complex behaviours, with CPD being a key type of behaviour change intervention, it follows that developing a greater understanding of the theory, methods and techniques involved in complex behaviour change could facilitate the design and effectiveness of CPD.…”

“…If we accept that healthcare professional practice is made up of a series of complex behaviours, with CPD being a key type of behaviour change intervention, it follows that developing a greater understanding of the theory, methods and techniques involved in complex behaviour change could facilitate the design and effectiveness of CPD. Considering training interventions in relation to the BCTs (which are the basic 'active' ingredients of an intervention) present, we argue, will add an extra dimension to how we characterise CPD training interventions and would go some way to addressing the deficit in comprehensive intervention descriptions and therefore support improvement in quality [7].…”

Medication adherence across the lifespan: Theory, methods, interventions and six grand challenges

“…As Morrissey and colleagues identify, reporting of methodology and results is often limited in ways that prevent replication and a clear synthesis of evidence (Morrissey et al, 2017). This includes poor reporting, coding and analysis of control or treatment as usual conditions (de Bruin et al, 2010;Oberjé, Dima, Pijnappel, Prins, & de Bruin, 2015). With the increasing mandatory use of reporting standard statements (Boutron et al, 2008;Hoffmann et al, 2014;Vandenbroucke et al, 2014), it is likely that the quality of evidence reporting will improve.…”