Susan Michie - ABC of Behaviour Change Theories

ABC of Behaviour
Change Theories

Susan Michie

Robert West

Rona Campbell

Jamie Brown

Heather Gainforth

Silverback Publishing

Copyright Susan Michie, Rona Campbell, Jamie Brown, Robert West and Heather Gainforth 2014

The rights of Professor Susan Michie, Professor Rona Campbell, Professor Robert West, Dr Jamie Brown and Dr Heather Gainforth to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2014 by Silverback Publishing

All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-291-88667-2

Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to reproducing copyright material.

Cover artwork courtesy of paniklondon.com

The author and publisher will be glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

www.silverbackpublishing.org

Endorsements

This book provides an extensive and encyclopaedic compendium of theories of behaviour change - and is a wonderful resource for students, scientists and practitioners working to encourage and evaluate behaviour change strategies. The analysis and illustration of relationships among theories is a unique feature that should serve readers especially well. Michie and colleagues have indeed created a book that will serve as both a primer and a reference for understanding the many available conceptual frameworks, their key constructs and applications.

Professor Karen Glanz, George A. Weiss University Professor, University of Pennsylvania

This book and website will be an important resource for people working to improve public health in any setting. It will help us all to think through the programmes and policies we are trying to develop, implement or change. It will also help to break down the disciplinary boundaries that often get in the way of applied research and practice. I hope that many others will contribute through the website so that the resource can be deepened and widened as theory and evidence develop.

Sally Wyke, Deputy Director, Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow

To capitalize on the potential that theories of behaviour change offer for the design and implementation of interventions to promote health, resources are needed that facilitate engagement between theory and practice. This book addresses this critical need and will prove to be a valuable, accessible resource for information about a wide-range of social and behavioural theories and will enable all of us to use these theories in a more thoughtful manner.

Alex Rothman, Department of Psychology
University of Minnesota

This book will greatly assist researchers and practitioners interested in behaviour change to navigate their way in the Babel of theories that have developed to describe very similar underlying approaches to changing behaviour in different disciplines that seek to change behaviour in different areas of application. It will be invaluable to researchers and practitioners who are looking for a more rational way of designing and explaining their approaches to changing behaviour.

Professor Wayne Hall, Director, Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research, The University of Queensland

The authors have done the formidable task of systematically identifying and describing 83 theories explaining how human behaviour is changed. Together these theories offer a more complete picture than is typically achieved by those embracing the preferred theories of any one discipline, profession or practice - and certainly more complete than the implicit theories of those who claim not to use any theory in accounting for behaviour. This impressive book will facilitate the integration of theory and evidence in a cumulative science of behaviour change.

Professor Marie Johnston, Institute of Applied Health Sciences, University of Aberdeen

Implementation of innovation in healthcare and public health settings usually involves changing behaviours of citizens, patients, professionals, managers and policy makers. There is increasing interest in the application of behavioural theory to understanding determinants of behaviour and planning behaviour change interventions. However, non-behavioural scientists are often daunted by the sheer number of psychological theories that commonly have overlapping constructs. This compendiums structured summaries of current behavioural theory (and their inter-relationships) provides a comprehensive overview of current behavioural theories

and will be a major resource for anyone interested in developing theory informed implementation programs.

Professor Jeremy Grimshaw, Director, Cochrane Canada

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Medical Research Council through its Population Health Science Research Collaboration. Robert Wests salary is funded by Cancer Research UK.

We are grateful to our advisory group for developing the literature search strategy and definitions of key terms and assisting in theory identification: 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, Daniel Wight, Daniel Zizzo. We are also grateful for the advice on the search strategy that we received from Alison Weightman and Mala Mann at the Support Unit for Research Evidence (SURE), Cardiff University.

We would also like to thank the following researchers who have worked on the project: Rachel Davis, Zoe Hildon, Lorna Hobbs and Kate Sheals.

Thanks also go to the following who assisted with preparation of content for the book: Louise Atkins, Heather Brown, Sarah Dowling, Claire Garnett, Araf Khaled, Samantha Lawes, Sara Mathieu, David Morris, Victoria Nelson, Emma Norris, Pandora Pound, Helena Rubinstein, Christopher Russell and Caroline Wood.

Foreword

During the course of working at the interface of policy, politics, politicians and academic research, as I have done for a good part of my professional life, there has been a recurrent theme; that is the periodic discovery that human behaviour is really important and that all sorts of policy goals could be achieved if only governments could get the public to change their behaviour. Many spheres of life have fallen under the gaze of politicians and policy makers in this regard, including things like recycling, driving, willingness to donate our organs after our death, and our ability to fill in government forms properly.

In health and welfare, the centrality of human behaviour to the causes of the diseases which put a huge burden on the health service such as Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity is indeed obvious. Whether we smoke, drink alcohol to excess, take exercise, and overeat drive the epidemics of these non-communicable diseases (with non-communicable meaning not communicated by physical means although they are communicated by social and psychological means). It is a relatively simple step to assume that if only government could get people to change their smoking, eating, drinking and exercise habits, then all would be well. However, as many a politician has discovered, it turns out to be far from easy to bring about those changes on the scale that would make a difference to demand on the health service.