City Research Online

Abstract

Background: CONSORT guidelines call for precise reporting of behavior change interventions: we need rigorous methods of characterizing active content of interventions with precision and specificity.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to develop an extensive, consensually agreed hierarchically structured taxonomy of techniques [behavior change techniques (BCTs)] used in behavior change interventions.

Methods: In a Delphi-type exercise, 14 experts rated labels and definitions of 124 BCTs from six published classification systems. Another 18 experts grouped BCTs according to similarity of active ingredients in an open-sort task. Inter-rater agreement amongst six researchers coding 85 intervention descriptions by BCTs was assessed.

Results: This resulted in 93 BCTs clustered into 16 groups. Of the 26 BCTs occurring at least five times, 23 had adjusted kappas of 0.60 or above.

Conclusions: “BCT taxonomy v1,” an extensive taxonomy of 93 consensually agreed, distinct BCTs, offers a step change as a method for specifying interventions, but we anticipate further development and evaluation based on international, interdisciplinary consensus.

Publication Type:	Article
Publisher Keywords:	Social Sciences, Psychology, Multidisciplinary, Psychology, PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY, Behavior change techniques, Taxonomy, Behavior change interventions, PHYSICAL-ACTIVITY, R-PACKAGE, INFORMATION, PROTOCOL, OUTCOMES, MEMORY, KAPPA
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Healthcare Services Research & Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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