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

Abstract

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.

The Men’s Safer Sex project: intervention development and feasibility randomised controlled trial of an interactive digital intervention to increase condom use in men

“…23 This is illustrated in a recent review of theories of behaviour change which found that only 3 out of 83 theories were integrative and set out to be comprehensive. 62,63 Models such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour 64 present a cognitive model of behaviour (attitudes, perceived norms and perceived behavioural control predict intentions which, in turn, predict behaviour), downplaying impulsive factors in decision-making, which may influence motivation (an important influence on behaviour). Beyond identifying potential influences on behaviour, the BCW also provides structured guidance for determining the content and format of interventions.…”

From Theory-Inspired to Theory-Based Interventions: A Protocol for Developing and Testing a Methodology for Linking Behaviour Change Techniques to Theoretical Mechanisms of Action

“…A definition of theory from a multidisciplinary consensus exercise is: 'a set of concepts and/or statements with specification of how phenomena relate to each other', providing 'an organising description of a system that accounts for what is known, and explains and predicts phenomena' ( [61], p. 5).…”

“…These vary in complexity and range of application and many overlap with each other. A review led by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and economists identified 83 theories of behaviour and behaviour change, containing more than 1700 theoretical constructs [61,62]. Given this abundance of theories, researchers and intervention designers are faced with difficult decisions as to which theory or theories they should draw on [63].…”

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“…Despite these advances and calls-to-action, there remains a lack of specificity about interventions [30,34,35]. Although the CONSORT guidelines [36] for publishing the results of clinical trials call for describing the interventions studied, the historical roots for describing interventions are in a medical clinical trials model; describing complex behavioral interventions is quite different.…”