Health psychology review
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Health psychology review · Jan 2015
Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler: towards a protocol for accumulating evidence regarding the active content of health behaviour change interventions.
There is a need to consolidate the evidence base underlying our toolbox of methods of behaviour change. Recent efforts to this effect have conducted meta-regressions on evaluations of behaviour change interventions, deriving each method's effectiveness from its association to intervention effect size. ⋯ An iterative protocol for evidence base accumulation is proposed that integrates evidence derived from both experimental and applied behaviour change research, and combines theory development in experimental settings with theory testing in applied real-life settings. As evidence gathered in this manner accumulates, a cumulative science of behaviour change can develop.