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Using rigorous methods to advance behaviour change science

Nature Human Behaviour volume 2, pages 797–799 (2018)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 21 November 2018

This article has been updated

The field of behaviour change suffers from significant fragmentation and poor reporting. Here, we describe two large-scale initiatives — the Human Behaviour Change Project and Science of Behavior Change programme — that aim to introduce complementary systematic and rigorous methods to advance the science of behaviour change.

The burden of disability-adjusted life years, prevalence of chronic health conditions and existence of other global challenges such as pollution are common, costly and often preventable1,2. Behaviours are critical targets of intervention to improve physical and mental well-being, longevity and the environment2. However, the science behind, and findings of, behaviour change interventions are frequently fragmented and inconsistently reported, and interventions are often unsuccessful in initiating and/or sustaining behaviour change3,4. As a result of fragmentation and poor reporting, much research wastes opportunities to build forward momentum, limiting opportunities to harness and synthesize findings to systematically improve behaviour change interventions, and the science informing them5. Here, we describe two recent initiatives on behaviour change — one from the United Kingdom and one from the United States — that were developed specifically, albeit independently, to tackle these problems. Although by no means the only international behaviour change initiatives, we highlight them here because they both aim to advance behaviour change science through an emphasis on common, systematic and rigorous methods, and they take different, but complementary, approaches in this pursuit. We believe that uniting these and other initiatives will cultivate a more cumulative science of behaviour change that can inform policy, practice and scientific progress.

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Fig. 1: Examples of HBCP and SOBC approaches to behaviour change science.
Fig. 2: How the approaches of the HBCP and SOBC can advance behaviour change research.

Change history

  • 21 November 2018

    In the version of this Comment originally published, the Acknowledgements section was missing information about the support from the National Institutes of Health Science of Behavior Change Common Fund Program; the full text should have read ‘This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Science of Behavior Change Common Fund Program through an award administered by the National Institute on Aging (U24AG052175) and by a Wellcome Trust collaborative award (The Human Behaviour-Change Project: Building the science of behaviour change for complex intervention development, 201,524/Z/16/Z).’ This has now been corrected in all versions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Science of Behavior Change Common Fund Program through an award administered by the National Institute on Aging (U24AG052175) and by a Wellcome Trust collaborative award (The Human Behaviour-Change Project: Building the science of behaviour change for complex intervention development, 201,524/Z/16/Z).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA

    Jennifer A. Sumner, Donald Edmondson & Karina W. Davidson

  2. Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, Centre for Behaviour Change, University College London, London, UK

    Rachel N. Carey & Susan Michie

  3. Institute of Applied Health Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Marie Johnston

Authors
  1. Jennifer A. Sumner
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  2. Rachel N. Carey
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  3. Susan Michie
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  4. Marie Johnston
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  5. Donald Edmondson
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  6. Karina W. Davidson
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Contributions

J.A.S. and K.W.D. led the drafting of the paper. All authors contributed to the manuscript, commented on successive drafts, and read and approved the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jennifer A. Sumner.

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Competing interests

S.M. (principal investigator), M.J. (co-investigator) and R.N.C. are members of the Human Behaviour Change Project. K.W.D. (co-principal investigator), D.E. (co-principal investigator) and J.A.S. (co-investigator) are members of the Resource and Coordinating Center for the Science of Behavior Change Research Network.

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Sumner, J.A., Carey, R.N., Michie, S. et al. Using rigorous methods to advance behaviour change science. Nat Hum Behav 2, 797–799 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0471-8

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