Behavior change in practice: Hands-on guides for research and intervention development

Many health psychologists are involved with behaviour change, be it through developing interventions, studying ways to change behaviour or explaining why peopleengage in risk and health behaviors. Therefore, much of our communication is concerned with the primary research related to behaviour change. This issue of the European Health Psychologist, however, addresses a side of our work we rarely discuss in the literature: the practical side of developing or studying behaviour change interventions. Specifically, this issue will address the basic steps required in order to identify which beliefs and determinants to change, and which behaviour change methods can achieve these changes; how to utilize theory in the development of behaviour change methods/techniques; how to publish behaviour change interventions and how to assess and promote fidelity of intervention implementation; how to apply N-of-1 methodology and analyses to examine intervention effectiveness; and how one can go about working towards consensus regarding a specific behaviour change method. Each of these contributions offers practical guidelines that can be useful to students, Ph.D. candidates or other early-career researchers, and practitioners.