Engl Elisabeth, Sgaier Sema K
Surgo Foundation, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001, USA.
Department of Global Health & Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Gates Open Res. 2019 Mar 18;3:886. doi: 10.12688/gatesopenres.12923.2. eCollection 2019.
A pressing goal in global development and other sectors is often to understand what drives people's behaviors, and how to influence them. Yet designing behavior change interventions is often an unsystematic process, hobbled by insufficient understanding of contextual and perceptual behavioral drivers and a narrow focus on limited research methods to assess them. We propose a toolkit (CUBES) of two solutions to help programs arrive at more effective interventions. First, we introduce a novel framework of behavior, which is a practical tool for programs to structure potential drivers and match corresponding interventions. This evidence-based framework was developed through extensive cross-sectoral literature research and refined through application in large-scale global development programs. Second, we propose a set of descriptive, experimental, and simulation approaches that can enhance and expand the methods commonly used in global development. Since not all methods are equally suited to capture the different types of drivers of behavior, we present a decision aid for method selection. We recommend that existing commonly used methods, such as observations and surveys, use CUBES as a scaffold and incorporate validated measures of specific types of drivers in order to comprehensively test all the potential components of a target behavior. We also recommend under-used methods from sectors such as market research, experimental psychology, and decision science, which programs can use to extend their toolkit and test the importance and impact of key enablers and barriers. The CUBES toolkit enables programs across sectors to streamline the process of conceptualizing, designing, and optimizing interventions, and ultimately to change behaviors and achieve targeted outcomes.
全球发展及其他领域的一个紧迫目标通常是了解驱动人们行为的因素以及如何对其施加影响。然而，设计行为改变干预措施往往是一个缺乏系统性的过程，因对情境和感知行为驱动因素的理解不足以及过于局限于评估这些因素的有限研究方法而受到阻碍。我们提出了一个包含两种解决方案的工具包（CUBES），以帮助各项目制定更有效的干预措施。首先，我们引入了一个新颖的行为框架，这是一个实用工具，可帮助各项目梳理潜在驱动因素并匹配相应的干预措施。这个基于证据的框架是通过广泛的跨部门文献研究开发出来的，并在大规模全球发展项目的应用中得到完善。其次，我们提出了一套描述性、实验性和模拟性方法，这些方法可以改进和扩展全球发展中常用的方法。由于并非所有方法都同样适合捕捉不同类型的行为驱动因素，我们提供了一个方法选择决策辅助工具。我们建议，现有的常用方法，如观察法和调查法，以CUBES为框架，并纳入特定类型驱动因素的经过验证的测量方法，以便全面测试目标行为的所有潜在组成部分。我们还推荐市场研究、实验心理学和决策科学等领域较少使用的方法，各项目可以用这些方法来扩充其工具包，并测试关键促成因素和障碍的重要性及影响。CUBES工具包使各领域的项目能够简化干预措施的概念化、设计和优化过程，并最终改变行为，实现预期成果。
