Year: 2008
Type: editorial
Abstract: In the editorial by Michie and Abraham [1] on the need for more rigour when describing interventions is timely. There is considerable interest in behaviour change interventions and a great deal of progress is being made into determining what elements of behaviour change can be effective in what circumstances. But to enable this progress to be sustained and applied to areas such as addiction it will be essential that behavioural interventions be fully described using a terminology that allows replication and statistical and qualitative comparisons across studies. As a first step in this process Addiction will require all papers that involve behavioural interventions to lodge any manuals and treatment protocols in an online database. There will be a link from the online version of the paper to those materials. The materials should normally be reproduced verbatim but in exceptional circumstances (for example when there are copyright issues) a detailed description should be given that contains all the key elements of the intervention. It is not necessary to submit this material with the original submission; authors will be asked for it on acceptance. It would also be helpful if authors could include a summary of the intervention elements at the start of the document that they lodge in the database. Everything should be included in a single Word file or PDF. When a taxonomy of behavioural intervention elements has been more fully developed, we propose to ask authors to use that taxonomy when describing their interventions in the article itself. We hope that other journals will also adopt this policy and ultimately that there will be a common standard for reporting behavioural interventions. Comments on the policy would be welcomed.
Source: Addiction
Author: ROBERT WEST
Language: English
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2120061189