Behaviour Change Techniques on the Go: Launch of a new version of the BCTTv1 App

By Emma Norris, Dave Crane & Susan Michie, University College London

Changing behaviour is an immensely complex process, as we’ve seen in posts across the Digi-Hub blog! In order to describe and replicate behaviour change interventions, it is crucial to understand the component techniques that are delivered. However different terms may be used to describe the same techniques. For example, “behavioural counseling” may involve “educating patients” or “feedback, self-monitoring and reinforcement”.

Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) are observable and replicable components of an intervention designed to alter or redirect causal processes that regulate behaviour. They can be thought of as “active ingredients” of ‘what’ is delivered (e.g feedback, self-monitoring and reinforcement). BCTs can be used alone or in combination, via a variety of modes of delivery (e.g mobile apps, paper leaflets, face-to-face).

The Behaviour Change Techniques Taxonomy v1 (BCTTv1) was developed as a hierarchically structured classification of 93 BCTs. Developed via extensive expert consultation exercises, BCTTv1 has been used globally to describe the content of new interventions, as well as synthesise the content of already completed interventions via systematic reviews and meta-analyses. To date, the taxonomy has been cited almost 2000 times since its publication in 2013.

BCTTv1 app

A mobile app version of the taxonomy is freely available to allow more flexible use of the BCTTv1 by intervention developers and coders. This allows users to explore the structure of the taxonomy, as well as view definitions and examples of all BCTs.

New versions of the app have been recently launched on ITunes and Google Play. To date the app has been downloaded over 1700 times from each app store.

BCT Training Tool

A free training tool has also been developed http://www.bct-taxonomy.com/, providing a resource for intervention designers, researchers, practitioners, systematic reviews and all those wishing to communicate the content of behaviour change interventions.

 

Feedback on BCTTv1 Portal

BCTTv1 was developed with the understanding that, in a few years, feedback from international users would lead to the development of BCTTv2. In order to inform this development, we encourage users of BCTTv1 to submit information about their experiences within this portal: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour-change-techniques/bcttv1-feedback

Please do try out and share these free resources.

For queries on the app or tool, please contact contact@bct-taxonomy.com

 

Questions:

• How would you use the app as part of your work?
• What BCTs do you most commonly implement in your own studies?

 

Bios:

Dr Emma Norris (@EJ_Norris) is a Research Fellow on the Human Behaviour-Change Project at UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change. Her research interests include the synthesis of health behaviour change research and development and evaluation of physical activity interventions.

 

 

 

 

Dr David Crane (@dhc23) studied under Susan Michie at UCL and founded and runs the Smoke Free app. His research focuses on understanding what behaviour change techniques, in what combination, frequency, duration and form are going to be effective for a particular individual at a particular moment in time.

 

 

Professor Susan Michie (@SusanMichie) is Professor of Health Psychology and Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at UCL. Her research focuses on developing the science of behaviour change interventions and applying behavioural science to interventions. She works with a wide range of disciplines, practitioners and policy-makers and holds grants from a large number of organisations including the Wellcome Trust, National Institute of Health Research, Economic and Social Research Council and Cancer Research UK.