Scale up of behaviour change interventions: A rapid review of evidence and practice

Abstract

Behaviour science has been applied for public value by more than 100 government and public purpose organisations worldwide. Much of this work has focused on evidence production through rigorous research design and theories of behaviour change.However, successfully tested interventions are not always scaled up to an entire population of interest, a new setting, or adapted to new target behaviours. Scaling up effective behaviour change interventions is often the true goal and often represents a challenge for government and research end-users working in behavioural science. We conducted a systematic search for an overview of reviews of scholarly evidence on scale up, and 11 practice interviews with behaviour science researchers and practitioners to identify the factors and activities that influence the scale up of behaviour change interventions. This work is aimed not only at uncovering the effectiveness of these activities but also at increasing the reach and impact of behaviour change interventions at scale.

What Works to Increase Charitable Donations? A Meta-Review with Meta-Meta-Analysis

“…We hope future reviews discuss the external validity of their included studies, and could consider integrating those judgements into their own certainty assessment (e.g., via GRADE). Another approach would be to assess the facilitators and barriers to successfully delivering a pilot-tested intervention to new populations and in new contexts (e.g., scale-up; Saeri et al, 2021).…”