Threat appeals in health communication: messages that elicit fear and enhance perceived efficacy positively impact on young male drivers

BACKGROUND: Health communications often present graphic, threat-based representations of the potential consequences of health-risk behaviours. These 'threat appeals' feature prominently in public health campaigns, but their use is controversial, with studies investigating their efficacy reporting inconsistent, and often negative, findings. This research examined the impact of a threat-based road safety advertisement on the driving behaviour of young male drivers. METHODS: To address limitations of previous research, we first identified a road safety advertisement that objectively and subjectively elicited fear using physiological and subjective measures. Study 1 (n = 62) examined the effect of this advertisement, combined with a manipulation designed to increase perceived efficacy, on speed choice. Study 2 (n = 81) investigated whether a state emotion, anger, impacts on the effectiveness of the advertisement in changing four distinct driving behaviours. Both studies examined short-term effects only. RESULTS: Study 1 findings indicated that a high threat message, when combined with high perceived efficacy, can lead to a decrease in speed choice. Study 2 results suggested that increased levels of state anger may counteract the potential value of combining fear-arousing threats and efficacy-building messages. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that threat-based road safety communications that target affective (fear) and cognitive (perceived efficacy) mechanisms can positively affect driving behaviours. State emotions, such as anger, may negatively impact on the effectiveness of the message. Taken together, these findings provide additional support for the use of efficacy-building messages in threat-based communications, but highlight the need for further research into the complex array of affective influences on driving

From Theory-Inspired to Theory-Based Interventions: A Protocol for Developing and Testing a Methodology for Linking Behaviour Change Techniques to Theoretical Mechanisms of Action

BACKGROUND: Understanding links between behaviour change techniques (BCTs) and mechanisms of action (the processes through which they affect behaviour) helps inform the systematic development of behaviour change interventions. PURPOSE: This research aims to develop and test a methodology for linking BCTs to their mechanisms of action. METHODS: Study 1 (published explicit links): Hypothesised links between 93 BCTs (from the 93-item BCT taxonomy, BCTTv1) and mechanisms of action will be identified from published interventions and their frequency, explicitness and precision documented. Study 2 (expert-agreed explicit links): Behaviour change experts will identify links between 61 BCTs and 26 mechanisms of action in a formal consensus study. Study 3 (integrated matrix of explicit links): Agreement between studies 1 and 2 will be evaluated and a new group of experts will discuss discrepancies. An integrated matrix of BCT-mechanism of action links, annotated to indicate strength of evidence, will be generated. Study 4 (published implicit links): To determine whether groups of co-occurring BCTs can be linked to theories, we will identify groups of BCTs that are used together from the study 1 literature. A consensus exercise will be used to rate strength of links between groups of BCT and theories. CONCLUSIONS: A formal methodology for linking BCTs to their hypothesised mechanisms of action can contribute to the development and evaluation of behaviour change interventions. This research is a step towards developing a behaviour change 'ontology', specifying relations between BCTs, mechanisms of action, modes of delivery, populations, settings and types of behaviour

Patient with Total Hip Replacement: Bedside Simulation and its Implications for Collaborative Practice and Improved Patient Safety

Purpose – To share an experience that provides students with an authentic opportunity to perform, collaborate and learn roles and responsibilities during a simulated bedside experience with medical imaging (MI), nursing and physical therapy (PT) students. Background – Collaborative “practice ready” graduates are essential to the concept of patient-centered care and are dependent on the shared knowledge of one’s individual skills as well as the common skills within the team structure. This preparation cannot occur without the emphasis on roles and responsibilities, collaborative communication, and improved teamwork. Many interprofessional education (IPE) programs provide collaborative experiences between nursing and PT students, but opportunity for MI is not always present. This experience offers a unique model to allow integration of imaging as an important component of the team. Description – Collaborative student teams attended to a simulated patient at the bedside in a nursing lab. Students were provided with a patient chart. Nursing students initiated the introduction and evaluation, physical therapy students performed the pre-transfer assessments, and medical imaging students performed simulated post-operative x-rays. Each was charged with ensuring communication, teamwork and patient safety. Results – Qualitative feedback was positive. Common themes evolved around improved knowledge of the roles of others, similarities in assessment needs, and the importance of communication. A common thread was the role that communication and teamwork play in patient safety when positioning and mobilizing a patient with post-surgical precautions, the use of imaging to aid in diagnostic decision making, and the need to keep the patient at the center of collaborative care. Conclusion – This simulation offered students the opportunity to improve on the collaborative effort of nursing, PT and MI that is often part of the patient experience s/p a total hip arthroplasty. Relevance – Integration of multiple professions in simulated experiences broadens the discussion and highlights the commonalities of patient-centered care. Objectives Recognize opportunities and value to engage medical imaging, nursing and physical therapy students in a collaborative learning experience. Describe approaches for integrating different health professional students with the focus on communication and information sharing for patient safety initiatives. Describe an innovative interprofessional simulation activity with attention to cooperative clinical partnerships

Delivering Behaviour Change Interventions: Development of a Mode of Delivery Ontology [version 1; peer review: 1 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

Background: Investigating and improving the effects of behaviour change interventions requires detailed and consistent specification of all aspects of interventions. An important feature of interventions is the way in which these are delivered, i.e. their mode of delivery. This paper describes an ontology for specifying the mode of delivery of interventions, which forms part of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology, currently being developed in the Wellcome Trust funded Human Behaviour-Change Project. / Methods: The Mode of Delivery Ontology was developed in an iterative process of annotating behaviour change interventions evaluation reports, and consulting with expert stakeholders. It consisted of seven steps: 1) annotation of 110 intervention reports to develop a preliminary classification of modes of delivery; 2) open review from international experts (n=25); 3) second round of annotations with 55 reports to test inter-rater reliability and identify limitations; 4) second round of expert review feedback (n=16); 5) final round of testing of the refined ontology by two annotators familiar and two annotators unfamiliar with the ontology; 6) specification of ontological relationships between entities; and 7) transformation into a machine-readable format using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) language and publishing online. / Results: The resulting ontology is a four-level hierarchical structure comprising 65 unique modes of delivery, organised by 15 upper-level classes: Informational, Environmental change, Somatic, Somatic alteration, Individual-based/ Pair-based /Group-based, Uni-directional/Interactional, Synchronous/ Asynchronous, Push/ Pull, Gamification, Arts feature. Relationships between entities consist of is_a. Inter-rater reliability of the Mode of Delivery Ontology for annotating intervention evaluation reports was a=0.80 (very good) for those familiar with the ontology and a= 0.58 (acceptable) for those unfamiliar with it. / Conclusion: The ontology can be used for both annotating and writing behaviour change intervention evaluation reports in a consistent and coherent manner, thereby improving evidence comparison, synthesis, replication, and implementation of effective interventions

Delivering Behaviour Change Interventions: Development of a Mode of Delivery Ontology [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]

Background: Investigating and improving the effects of behaviour change interventions requires detailed and consistent specification of all aspects of interventions. An important feature of interventions is the way in which these are delivered, i.e. their mode of delivery. This paper describes an ontology for specifying the mode of delivery of interventions, which forms part of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology, currently being developed in the Wellcome Trust funded Human Behaviour-Change Project. Methods: The Mode of Delivery Ontology was developed in an iterative process of annotating behaviour change interventions evaluation reports, and consulting with expert stakeholders. It consisted of seven steps: 1) annotation of 110 intervention reports to develop a preliminary classification of modes of delivery; 2) open review from international experts (n=25); 3) second round of annotations with 55 reports to test inter-rater reliability and identify limitations; 4) second round of expert review feedback (n=16); 5) final round of testing of the refined ontology by two annotators familiar and two annotators unfamiliar with the ontology; 6) specification of ontological relationships between entities; and 7) transformation into a machine-readable format using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and publishing online. Results: The resulting ontology is a four-level hierarchical structure comprising 65 unique modes of delivery, organised by 15 upper-level classes: Informational, Environmental change, Somatic, Somatic alteration, Individual-based/ Pair-based /Group-based, Uni-directional/Interactional, Synchronous/ Asynchronous, Push/ Pull, Gamification, Arts feature. Relationships between entities consist of is_a. Inter-rater reliability of the Mode of Delivery Ontology for annotating intervention evaluation reports was a=0.80 (very good) for those familiar with the ontology and a= 0.58 (acceptable) for those unfamiliar with it. Conclusion: The ontology can be used for both annotating and writing behaviour change intervention evaluation reports in a consistent and coherent manner, thereby improving evidence comparison, synthesis, replication, and implementation of effective interventions

Development of an online tool for linking behavior change techniques and mechanisms of action based on triangulation of findings from literature synthesis and expert consensus)

Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers develop interventions to change behavior based on their understanding of how behavior change techniques (BCTs) impact the determinants of behavior. A transparent, systematic, and accessible method of linking BCTs with the processes through which they change behavior (i.e., their mechanisms of action [MoAs]) would advance the understanding of intervention effects and improve theory and intervention development. The purpose of this study is to triangulate evidence for hypothesized BCT-MoA links obtained in two previous studies and present the results in an interactive, online tool. Two previous studies generated evidence on links between 56 BCTs and 26 MoAs based on their frequency in literature synthesis and on expert consensus. Concordance between the findings of the two studies was examined using multilevel modeling. Uncertainties and differences between the two studies were reconciled by 16 behavior change experts using consensus development methods. The resulting evidence was used to generate an online tool. The two studies showed concordance for 25 of the 26 MoAs and agreement for 37 links and for 460 "nonlinks." A further 55 links were resolved by consensus (total of 92 [37 + 55] hypothesized BCT-MoA links). Full data on 1,456 possible links was incorporated into the online interactive Theory and Technique Tool (https://theoryandtechniquetool.humanbehaviourchange.org/). This triangulation of two distinct sources of evidence provides guidance on how BCTs may affect the mechanisms that change behavior and is available as a resource for behavior change intervention designers, researchers and theorists, supporting intervention design, research synthesis, and collaborative research

Development of an Intervention Setting Ontology for behaviour change: Specifying where interventions take place

Background: Contextual factors such as an intervention's setting are key to understanding how interventions to change behaviour have their effects and patterns of generalisation across contexts. The intervention's setting is not consistently reported in published reports of evaluations. Using ontologies to specify and classify intervention setting characteristics enables clear and reproducible reporting, thus aiding replication, implementation and evidence synthesis. This paper reports the development of a Setting Ontology for behaviour change interventions as part of a Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology, currently being developed in the Wellcome Trust funded Human Behaviour-Change Project. Methods: The Intervention Setting Ontology was developed following methods for ontology development used in the Human Behaviour-Change Project: 1) Defining the ontology's scope, 2) Identifying key entities by reviewing existing classification systems (top-down) and 100 published behaviour change intervention reports (bottom-up), 3) Refining the preliminary ontology by literature annotation of 100 reports, 4) Stakeholder reviewing by 23 behavioural science and public health experts to refine the ontology, 5) Assessing inter-rater reliability of using the ontology by two annotators familiar with the ontology and two annotators unfamiliar with it, 6) Specifying ontological relationships between setting entities and 7) Making the Intervention Setting Ontology machine-readable using Web Ontology Language (OWL) and publishing online. Results: The Intervention Setting Ontology consists of 72 entities structured hierarchically with two upper-level classes: Physical setting including Geographic location, Attribute of location (including Area social and economic condition, Population and resource density sub-levels) and Intervention site (including Facility, Transportation and Outdoor environment sub-levels), as well as Social setting. Inter-rater reliability was found to be 0.73 (good) for those familiar with the ontology and 0.61 (acceptable) for those unfamiliar with it. Conclusion: The Intervention Setting Ontology can be used to code information from diverse sources, annotate the setting characteristics of existing intervention evaluation reports and guide future reporting

Improving the Public’s Health Through Sustained, Multidisciplinary Academic and Community Partnerships: The MSM Model

Background: To meet the growing needs of communities with increased chronic conditions, decreased access to health services, and a changing sociocultural environment, there is a critical need for community-oriented physicians equipped with the skills to attend to the health of underserved populations. The Morehouse School of Medicine Community Health Course’s (CHC) purpose is to inculcate service-learning and public health techniques to equip community-oriented physicians with empathy and tools to effectively engage diverse communities and provide care that addresses the social determinants of health to achieve health equity. The purpose of this practice note is to discuss CHC multidisciplinary strategies used to sustain community partner relationships and impact public health. Methods: We work to effectively engage community partners in a number of ways including: a core approach that the partnership is designed to assess, listen to, and meet the communities’ needs; that community partners inform the course curriculum through a community advisory board, an introductory course community panel (of advice for effective engagement), and attendance at course meetings and retreats; a continued relationship between the course faculty and the community site over time; community representatives as co-authors on presentations and publications; and, at times, maintained student contact with the community sites for volunteer activities after completion of the course. Results: The Community Health Course collaborates with its community partners to educate medical students, provide requested services to the communities, and impact the health needs of the communities. The course has developed long-term partnerships varying in lengths from 1 year to over 15 years. The partner organizations over the last ten years have included pre-K-12 schools, independent senior living facilities, youth organizations, community-based organizations, and homeless shelters. Conclusions: Through long-standing collaborations with partnering organizations, the CHC has participated in the development of several sustainable projects traversing multiple levels of the social ecological model

Behavior Change Techniques and Their Mechanisms of Action: A Synthesis of Links Described in Published Intervention Literature

Background: Despite advances in behavioral science, there is no widely shared understanding of the "mechanisms of action" (MoAs) through which individual behavior change techniques (BCTs) have their effects. Cumulative progress in the development, evaluation, and synthesis of behavioral interventions could be improved by identifying the MoAs through which BCTs are believed to bring about change. Purpose: This study aimed to identify the links between BCTs and MoAs described by authors of a corpus of published literature. Methods: Hypothesized links between BCTs and MoAs were extracted by two coders from 277 behavior change intervention articles. Binomial tests were conducted to provide an indication of the relative frequency of each link. Results: Of 77 BCTs coded, 70 were linked to at least one MoA. Of 26 MoAs, all but one were linked to at least one BCT. We identified 2,636 BCT-MoA links in total (mean number of links per article = 9.56, SD = 13.80). The most frequently linked MoAs were "Beliefs about Capabilities" and "Intention." Binomial test results identified up to five MoAs linked to each of the BCTs (M = 1.71, range: 1-5) and up to eight BCTs for each of the MoAs (M = 3.63, range: 1-8). Conclusions: The BCT-MoA links described by intervention authors and identified in this extensive review present intervention developers and reviewers with a first level of systematically collated evidence. These findings provide a resource for the development of theory-based interventions, and for theoretical understanding of intervention evaluations. The extent to which these links are empirically supported requires systematic investigation

Links Between Behavior Change Techniques and Mechanisms of Action: An Expert Consensus Study

Background: Understanding the mechanisms through which behavior change techniques (BCTs) can modify behavior is important for the development and evaluation of effective behavioral interventions. To advance the field, we require a shared knowledge of the mechanisms of action (MoAs) through which BCTs may operate when influencing behavior. Purpose: To elicit expert consensus on links between BCTs and MoAs. Methods: In a modified Nominal Group Technique study, 105 international behavior change experts rated, discussed, and rerated links between 61 frequently used BCTs and 26 MoAs. The criterion for consensus was that at least 80 per cent of experts reached agreement about a link. Heat maps were used to present the data relating to all possible links. Results: Of 1,586 possible links (61 BCTs × 26 MoAs), 51 of 61 (83.6 per cent) BCTs had a definite link to one or more MoAs (mean [SD] = 1.44 [0.96], range = 1-4), and 20 of 26 (76.9 per cent) MoAs had a definite link to one or more BCTs (mean [SD] = 3.27 [2.91], range = 9). Ninety (5.7 per cent) were identified as "definite" links, 464 (29.2 per cent) as "definitely not" links, and 1,032 (65.1 per cent) as "possible" or "unsure" links. No "definite" links were identified for 10 BCTs (e.g., "Action Planning" and "Behavioural Substitution") and for six MoAs (e.g., "Needs" and "Optimism"). Conclusions: The matrix of links between BCTs and MoAs provides a basis for those developing and synthesizing behavioral interventions. These links also provide a framework for specifying empirical tests in future studies