Objective: Without standardized definitions of the techniques included in behavior change interventions it is difficult to faithfully replicate effective interventions and challenging to identify techniques contributing to effectiveness across interventions. This research aimed to develop and test a theory-linked taxonomy of generally-applicable behavior change techniques (BCTs).Design: Twenty six BCTs were defined. Two psychologists used a five-page coding manual to independently judge the presence or absence of each technique in published intervention descriptions and in intervention manuals.Results: Three systematic reviews yielded 195 published descriptions. Across 78 reliability tests (i.e., 26 techniques applied to 3 reviews), the average Kappa per technique was 0.79 with 93% of judgments being agreements. Interventions were found to vary widely in the range and type of techniques employed, even when targeting the same behavior among similar participants. The average agreement for intervention manuals was 85% and a comparison of BCTs identified in 13 manuals and 13 published articles describing the same interventions generated a technique correspondence rate of 74% with most mismatches (73%) arising from identification of a technique in the manual but not in the article. For example, a reviewer might observe that some interventions employ goal setting alone while others combine goal setting with self-monitoring and feedback (as might be suggested by control theory; Carver & Scheier, 1982). If the latter group were found to be consistently more effective than the former this would indicate that the combination of these three techniques (rather then goal setting alone) was critical to effectiveness. Unfortunately, categorization of intervention content is problematic because a standardized vocabulary which defines intervention components has not been developed. Consequently, different reviewers use different approaches to categorizing intervention content (cf. Albarracín, Gillete, Earl, Glasman & Durantini, 2005;. This may mean that particular techniques or content characteristics which distinguish between interventions remain unidentified. If such "unseen" content differences are associated with effectiveness then researchers will remain unaware of how intervention content determines effectiveness, thereby impeding the design of optimally effective interventions.
ConclusionsMeta-analysis has demonstrated that inclusion of particular intervention techniques is associated with to effectiveness. For example, Albarracín et al. (2005) showed that 10 distinct techniques (e.g., provision of factual information, attitudinal arguments and normative arguments) could be reliably identified in published descriptions of interventions designed to promote condom use. These reviewers identified which techniques were associated with effectiveness and how technique effectiveness was moderated by the recipients. For example, provision of normative arguments was found to be associated with effectiveness for audiences u...