Theories of behaviour and behaviour change across the social and behavioural sciences: a scoping review (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
Capturing the impact of social sciences on other disciplines is notoriously difficult. Daniel Holman, Rebecca Lynch, and Aaron Reeves have looked at the example of health behaviour interventions (HBIs), a field recently criticised for failing to draw on alternative, social sciences approaches that emphasise the structured and contextual aspects of behaviour and health. A bibliometric analysis of the HBIs field over the last decade reveals that despite an increase in the number of papers published, the proportion of those that explicitly address issues related to social context has actually diminished. Rather than continuing to focus on individualistic explanations of behaviour, a more thoroughly interdisciplinary approach is required; one that adopts a more nuanced conception of how the social and cultural context shapes behaviour.
Challenges to changing health behaviours in developing countries: A critical overview
Social Science & Medicine, 2012
This overview of recent research on health behaviour change in developing countries shows progress as well as pitfalls. In order to provide guidance to health and social scientists seeking to change common practices that contribute to illness and death, there needs to be a common approach to developing interventions and evaluating their outcomes. Strategies forming the basis of interventions and programs to change behaviour need to focus on three sources: theories of behaviour change, evidence for the success and failure of past attempts, and an in-depth understanding of one's audience. Common pitfalls are a lack of attention to the wisdom of theories that address strategies of change at the individual, interpersonal, and community levels.
Toward a Global Theory of Health Behavior and Social Change
The Handbook of Global Health Communication, 2012
Our own experience as scholar-practitioners reinforces this view. Early applications of theory in health communication emphasized individual-level theories of learning, persuasion, and decision making as they related to health behavior and, especially, behavior change. Programs used psychosocial theories such as Reasoned Action/Planned Behavior (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975; Ajzen and Fishbein, 1997) and Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986, 1995) to guide strategic planning, then evaluated the programs guided by the same frameworks (e.g., did communication affect efficacy beliefs and did efficacy beliefs in turn affect behavior?). The systematic application and testing of theories in this way over time, in varied settings and for many health issues demonstrated that it was possible to measure communication processes and outcomes reliably, spurring the field away from the notion of communication impact as an unobservable "black box" process (Friedenberg and Silverman, 2006, pp. 85-88) and toward more sophisticated models of change. It is true that the early modern history of communication theory, including its application to health issues, overemphasized individual-level behavior change. This was soundly criticized, particularly by Latin American scholars (Beltrán, 1974; Diaz Bordenave, 1976), who noted a lack of attention to structural factors in social change and to power inequities that can stifle change. In response, more structurally oriented theories of change arose (Rogers, 1976) that acknowledged additional higher-order determinants of health, such as network structures and access to resources, as well as individual-level psychosocial factors. For example, by the third edition of Diffusion of Innovations, Rogers (1983) had moved beyond an information dissemination model of communication toward the convergence model (Kincaid, 1979, 2009; Rogers and Kincaid, 1981). Convergence describes a process of change grounded in socially situated dialogue, not the result of simple exposure to new information. Thus, behavioral choices take into account the appropriateness of a new practice within the social milieu; the social, economic, and, presumably, cultural costs of a change in practices; the relative advantageeconomic, social, material-of a new practice over an existing one; the complexity of the practice, including access to the resources and social support one needs to actualize change; and whether it is possible to see what happened to others who have tried to change. This version of diffusion also implicitly acknowledged the importance of powerthe capacity to exercise control over others-as a function of network structures and of the relationships between communicators that sometimes distort and sometimes strengthen communication and the process of change. Although commonly measured at the individual level, most of the factors listed above are inherently social and structural, not strictly individual, because they require consideration of one's neighbors, of what is acceptable and possible in one's community and society, of control over resources and access to social support and, in the case of some new practices, the extent to which one can or must collaborate with others to achieve (or resist) change. Demand for Accountability At the same time that a shift was happening toward more social and structural views of communication, more and more opportunities for applied research in diverse settings were being funded under a series of global procurements for health communication
Using Health Education Theories to Explain Behavior Change: A Cross-Country Analysis
The International Quarterly of Community Health Education, 2006
Scholars within the fields of public health, health education, health promotion, and health communication look to specific theories to explain health behavior change. The purpose of this article is to critically compare four health theories and key variables within them with regard to behavior change in the area of reproductive health. Using cross-country analyses of Ghana, Nepal, and Nicaragua (data sets provided by the Center for Communication Programs, Johns Hopkins University), the authors looked at the Health Belief Model, Theory of Reasoned Action, Extended Parallel Process Model, and Social Cognitive Theory for these two defined objectives. Results show that all four
Why is changing health-related behaviour so difficult?
Public health, 2016
To demonstrate that six common errors made in attempts to change behaviour have prevented the implementation of the scientific evidence base derived from psychology and sociology; to suggest a new approach which incorporates recent developments in the behavioural sciences. The role of health behaviours in the origin of the current epidemic of non-communicable disease is observed to have driven attempts to change behaviour. It is noted that most efforts to change health behaviours have had limited success. This paper suggests that in policy-making, discussions about behaviour change are subject to six common errors and that these errors have made the business of health-related behaviour change much more difficult than it needs to be. Overview of policy and practice attempts to change health-related behaviour. The reasons why knowledge and learning about behaviour have made so little progress in alcohol, dietary and physical inactivity-related disease prevention are considered, and an...
Behavioural Public Policy
Evidence on the effectiveness of health promotion interventions is mixed, especially in terms of the magnitude of their impact and long-term adherence. This paper proposes a comprehensive approach informed by behavioural economics of developing behavioural change programmes, which is designed to educate, activate, engage and empower people by taking into consideration individual and social mechanisms. Three applied pilots and their results are presented in order to illustrate the approach using cognitive and social mechanisms to lead to better health outcomes, individually and community-wide. More research is needed to explore levers and barriers for the systemic adoption of this framework in implementing health promotion interventions.