Defining Behaviour Change Techniques: implications for road safety

This report identifies and provides a definition of 40 behavioural change techniques (BCTs) and matches these to Cornwall Council’s current road safety education, training, and publicity (ETP) interventions. Although there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of each BCT, what evidence that exists is discussed.

A number of recommendations follow:
• It may be particularly beneficial to include techniques derived from Control Theory in behavioural change interventions (BCT’s 7,8,9,17,21,22,23,24,26,27,28 and 29). Specifically those prompting self-monitoring of behaviour and behaviour outcomes (BCT’s 23 and 24) may improve the effectiveness of an intervention. This could be achieved by asking targets to record their driving behaviour after the intervention, using, for example, a diary or a questionnaire.

• It may be beneficial to include at least one other technique, alongside BCTs 23 and 24, derived from Control Theory:

– Goal setting in terms of behaviour; this could be done by asking targets to make a behavioural resolution at the end of an intervention, for example, not to speed and/or to wear a seatbelt. This would depend on the aims of the intervention.

– Goal setting in terms of outcome; this could be done by adding expected consequence/s to the behavioural goals, for example, ‘to keep myself and passengers safe in the car’.

– Action planning; this could be done by encouraging targets to plan how/when/where they will achieve their goals, for example, ‘leave more time for travelling everyday to work’.

– Graded task setting; this could be done by encouraging targets to add a logical sequence to their action planning so each stage builds on small successes to achieve their desired behaviour.

– Prompting review of behavioural and/or outcome goals; this could be done by encouraging targets to review the extent to which they have achieved their goals in a certain time frame.

– Providing feedback on performance; this could be done during interventions when actual road safety behaviour is seen/assessed.

• Research has demonstrated the number of BCTs used in an intervention do not influence its effectiveness; therefore, it may be more beneficial to focus on enhancing the quality of a few BCTs and focus these on the aims of the intervention, rather than attempting to use numerous BCTs in a specific intervention.

The report includes a coding manual and checklist for practitioners to match BCTs to other interventions.