Although of course attempts to influence people's attitude and other psychological determinants were much older,[1] especially the definition developed in the late nineties yielded useful insights,[2] in particular four important benefits: Traditionally, reports of evaluations of behavior change interventions barely described the actual intervention,[3] making it very difficult to identify the most effective methods.
This was increasingly recognized in the late nineties and early twenty-first century, where behavior change methods gained increasing popularity, and another taxonomy was developed and subsequently gained popularity that enabled the coding of previously published interventions.
These determinants are included in theories of behavior explanation such as the reasoned action approach and health belief model.
Examples of well-known, and frequently applied, behavior change methods are fear appeals, persuasive communication, and modeling.
The concept of a behavior change method can be illustrated, for example, using the metaphor of physical exercise.
In addition, depending on the context and target population of an intervention, and the practical applications that can be used, some methods may be more appropriate choices for influencing a determinant than others.
[6][7][8] Progress in behavior change science is realized through the accumulation of findings from many intervention evaluations.
Descriptions of behavior change methods and their definitions provide such a vocabulary, thereby enhancing the accuracy of meta-analyses.
For example, the popular method of fear appeals, that aims to appeal to a person's fear as a drive for behavior change, will not work when it does not manage to induce, in the targeted individuals:[11] The relevant theory of change, the extended parallel process model, explains that when one of these four variables is low, no behavior change will occur, and in fact, it is even possible that a person will engage in health-defeating behavior.