The Behaviour Change Technique Ontology: Transforming the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1

Marta M Marques; Alison J Wright; Elizabeth Corker; Marie Johnston; Robert West; Janna Hastings; Lisa Zhang; Susan Michie

doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.19363.1

The Behaviour Change Technique Ontology: Transforming the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1

Marta M Marques^* (Corresponding Author), Alison J Wright, Elizabeth Corker, Marie Johnston, Robert West, Janna Hastings, Lisa Zhang, Susan Michie^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: The Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1 (BCTTv1) specifies the potentially active content of behaviour change interventions. Evaluation of BCTTv1 showed the need to extend it into a formal ontology, improve its labels and definitions, add BCTs and subdivide existing BCTs. We aimed to develop a Behaviour Change Technique Ontology (BCTO) that would meet these needs. Methods: The BCTO was developed by: (1) collating and synthesising feedback from multiple sources; (2) extracting information from published studies and classification systems; (3) multiple iterations of reviewing and refining entities, and their labels, definitions and relationships; (4) refining the ontology via expert stakeholder review of its comprehensiveness and clarity; (5) testing whether researchers could reliably apply the ontology to identify BCTs in intervention reports; and (6) making it available online and creating a machine-readable version. Results: Initially there were 282 proposed changes to BCTTv1. Following first-round review, 19 BCTs were split into two or more BCTs, 27 new BCTs were added and 26 BCTs were moved into a different group, giving 161 BCTs hierarchically organised into 12 logically defined higher-level groups in up to five hierarchical levels. Following expert stakeholder review, the refined ontology had 247 BCTs hierarchically organised into 20 higher-level groups. Independent annotations of intervention evaluation reports by researchers familiar and unfamiliar with the ontology resulted in good levels of inter-rater reliability (0.82 and 0.79, respectively). Following revision informed by this exercise, 34 BCTs were added, resulting in a final version of the BCTO containing 281 BCTs organised into 20 higher-level groups over five hierarchical levels. Discussion: The BCT Ontology provides a standard terminology and comprehensive classification system for the content of behaviour change interventions that can be reliably used to describe interventions.

Original language	English
Article number	308
Number of pages	25
Journal	Wellcome open research
Volume	8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.19363.1
Publication status	Published - 17 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Jeanette Chacon, Gabriella Stuart and Clement Veall for their contribution to organising the expert stakeholder feedback task, and to Micaela Santilli and Shaon Lahiri for their work on inter-rater reliability testing as researchers unfamiliar with the ontology. We would also like to thank all the experts who provided feedback on the ontology.

Grant Information:
This work was supported by Wellcome [201524].
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Data Availability Statement

Underlying data
Open Science Framework: Human Behaviour-Change Project. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/EFP4X (West et al., 2020).

The BCIO is available from: https://github.com/HumanBehaviourChangeProject/ontologies.

Archived version of the ontology as at time of publication: https://github.com/HumanBehaviourChangeProject/ontologies/tree/master/BehaviourChangeTechniques/inputs

Access to Document

10.12688/wellcomeopenres.19363.1Licence: CC BY

Marques_etal_WOR_The_Behaviour_Change_VOR
Copyright: © 2023 Marques MM et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Final published version, 1.01 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "The Behaviour Change Technique Ontology: Transforming the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1",

abstract = " Background: The Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1 (BCTTv1) specifies the potentially active content of behaviour change interventions. Evaluation of BCTTv1 showed the need to extend it into a formal ontology, improve its labels and definitions, add BCTs and subdivide existing BCTs. We aimed to develop a Behaviour Change Technique Ontology (BCTO) that would meet these needs. Methods: The BCTO was developed by: (1) collating and synthesising feedback from multiple sources; (2) extracting information from published studies and classification systems; (3) multiple iterations of reviewing and refining entities, and their labels, definitions and relationships; (4) refining the ontology via expert stakeholder review of its comprehensiveness and clarity; (5) testing whether researchers could reliably apply the ontology to identify BCTs in intervention reports; and (6) making it available online and creating a machine-readable version. Results: Initially there were 282 proposed changes to BCTTv1. Following first-round review, 19 BCTs were split into two or more BCTs, 27 new BCTs were added and 26 BCTs were moved into a different group, giving 161 BCTs hierarchically organised into 12 logically defined higher-level groups in up to five hierarchical levels. Following expert stakeholder review, the refined ontology had 247 BCTs hierarchically organised into 20 higher-level groups. Independent annotations of intervention evaluation reports by researchers familiar and unfamiliar with the ontology resulted in good levels of inter-rater reliability (0.82 and 0.79, respectively). Following revision informed by this exercise, 34 BCTs were added, resulting in a final version of the BCTO containing 281 BCTs organised into 20 higher-level groups over five hierarchical levels. Discussion: The BCT Ontology provides a standard terminology and comprehensive classification system for the content of behaviour change interventions that can be reliably used to describe interventions. ",

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AU - Wright, Alison J

AU - Corker, Elizabeth

AU - Johnston, Marie

AU - West, Robert

AU - Hastings, Janna

AU - Zhang, Lisa

AU - Michie, Susan

N1 - Acknowledgements We would like to thank Jeanette Chacon, Gabriella Stuart and Clement Veall for their contribution to organising the expert stakeholder feedback task, and to Micaela Santilli and Shaon Lahiri for their work on inter-rater reliability testing as researchers unfamiliar with the ontology. We would also like to thank all the experts who provided feedback on the ontology. Grant Information: This work was supported by Wellcome [201524]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

PY - 2023/7/17

Y1 - 2023/7/17

N2 - Background: The Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1 (BCTTv1) specifies the potentially active content of behaviour change interventions. Evaluation of BCTTv1 showed the need to extend it into a formal ontology, improve its labels and definitions, add BCTs and subdivide existing BCTs. We aimed to develop a Behaviour Change Technique Ontology (BCTO) that would meet these needs. Methods: The BCTO was developed by: (1) collating and synthesising feedback from multiple sources; (2) extracting information from published studies and classification systems; (3) multiple iterations of reviewing and refining entities, and their labels, definitions and relationships; (4) refining the ontology via expert stakeholder review of its comprehensiveness and clarity; (5) testing whether researchers could reliably apply the ontology to identify BCTs in intervention reports; and (6) making it available online and creating a machine-readable version. Results: Initially there were 282 proposed changes to BCTTv1. Following first-round review, 19 BCTs were split into two or more BCTs, 27 new BCTs were added and 26 BCTs were moved into a different group, giving 161 BCTs hierarchically organised into 12 logically defined higher-level groups in up to five hierarchical levels. Following expert stakeholder review, the refined ontology had 247 BCTs hierarchically organised into 20 higher-level groups. Independent annotations of intervention evaluation reports by researchers familiar and unfamiliar with the ontology resulted in good levels of inter-rater reliability (0.82 and 0.79, respectively). Following revision informed by this exercise, 34 BCTs were added, resulting in a final version of the BCTO containing 281 BCTs organised into 20 higher-level groups over five hierarchical levels. Discussion: The BCT Ontology provides a standard terminology and comprehensive classification system for the content of behaviour change interventions that can be reliably used to describe interventions.

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DO - 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.19363.1

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JO - Wellcome open research

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M1 - 308

ER -

The Behaviour Change Technique Ontology: Transforming the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Availability Statement

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