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Effective techniques in healthy eating and physical activity interventions: a meta-regression
Susan Michie1, Charles Abraham, Craig Whittington
1Centre for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness, University College London, UK. s.michie@ucl.ac.uk
Summary
Behavior change interventions promoting physical activity and healthy eating are more effective when using self-monitoring techniques, especially when combined with other self-regulation strategies.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral science
- Public health
- Health psychology
Background:
- Meta-analyses of behavior change interventions often show significant heterogeneity and small effect sizes.
- Effective strategies for promoting physical activity and healthy eating are crucial for public health.
- Understanding the impact of specific behavior change techniques is essential for intervention design.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the effectiveness of active behavior change interventions for physical activity and healthy eating.
- To investigate if theoretically specified behavior change techniques enhance intervention outcomes.
- To identify effective components within behavior change interventions.
Main Methods:
- Systematic review of experimental and quasi-experimental studies on interventions using behavioral and/or cognitive techniques.
- Classification of intervention content into 26 distinct behavior change techniques.
- Meta-regression analysis to assess the effects of individual techniques and theoretically derived combinations.
Main Results:
- The overall pooled effect size for the interventions was 0.31.
- The technique 'self-monitoring' accounted for the largest portion of heterogeneity (13%).
- Interventions combining self-monitoring with other control theory-derived techniques showed significantly greater effectiveness (0.42) compared to others (0.26).
Conclusions:
- Classifying interventions by component techniques and theoretically derived combinations aids in identifying effective strategies.
- Meta-regression is a valuable tool for dissecting intervention effectiveness and identifying key components.
- Specific behavior change techniques, particularly self-monitoring, are critical for successful interventions promoting physical activity and healthy eating.
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