NEW SIG: Theories and Techniques of Behavior Change Interventions

This is an invitation to all SBM members to join a new SBM Special Interest Group (SIG), Theories and Techniques of Behavior Change Interventions (TTBCI). This will be an interdisciplinary group of researchers, clinicians, and educators who are committed to developing methods to improve the design and evaluation of interventions aimed at changing preventive, illness-related and health professional behaviors. We will aim to promote research, education, training, mentoring, clinical and public health practice and policy development in the area of behavior change interventions.

Most interventions are complex, comprising many component behavior change techniques. To date, there has been no shared language for describing the content, especially the 'active ingredients' of behavior change interventions; by contrast, biomedical interventions are precisely specified. There is also increasing recognition of the importance of developing theory-based interventions. The SIG will allow exchange of ideas and foster collaboration with the aim of developing methods for specifying intervention content, evaluating the theory base of interventions, and linking behavior change techniques to theory.

If you would like to join the SIG, please send your name and email address to Ben Stumpf at bstumpf@sbm.org, and you will be included in the TTBCI SIG email listserv.

A TTBCI SIG Breakfast Roundtable will be held at the 2012 SBM Annual Meeting in New Orleans on Friday April 13, from 7:30 am-8:30 am, to discuss aims and activities and decide on chair rotations, procedures and volunteer roles. We are also running a TTBCI-related course, "Behaviour Change Techniques: A Reliable Method for Specifying Complex Intervention Content" at the meeting on Wednesday April 11, from 9:00 am-5:00 pm. We hope to see you there and/or at our SIG meeting.

Sincerely,
Susan Michie, DPhil, CPsychol, FBPS, AcSS
Marie Johnston, PhD
BCT Taxonomy Research Team, University College London, UK