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.

Keywords:

• behaviour change
• health behaviour
• theory
• behavioural interventions

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the study's advisory group for developing the literature search strategy, key definitions and the quality criteria for evaluating theory: Robert Aunger, Mary Barker, Mick Bloor, Heather Brown, Richard Cookson, Cyrus Cooper, Peter Craig, Paul Dieppe, Anna Dixon, Rachel Gooberman-Hill, Simon Griffin, Graham Hart, Kate Hunt, Susan Jebb, Marie Johnston, Mike Kelly, Steve Morris, Mark Petticrew, Paschal Sheeran, Mark Suhreke, Ivo Vlaev, Robert West, Daniel Wight, Daniel Zizzo. We are also grateful to Kate Sheals for invaluable help in the latter stages of manuscript preparation.

Funding

This project was funded by the Medical Research Council's Population Health Sciences Research Network [grant number PHSRN10]. The work was undertaken with the support of The Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), a UKCRC Public Health Research: Centre of Excellence. Funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council [RES-590-28-0005], Medical Research Council, the Welsh Government and the Wellcome Trust [WT087640MA], under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, is gratefully acknowledged.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2014.941722.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This project was funded by the Medical Research Council's Population Health Sciences Research Network [grant number PHSRN10]. The work was undertaken with the support of The Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), a UKCRC Public Health Research: Centre of Excellence. Funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council [RES-590-28-0005], Medical Research Council, the Welsh Government and the Wellcome Trust [WT087640MA], under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, is gratefully acknowledged.