Abstract
Background: Effective behaviour change interventions are needed to impact important health outcomes, including morbidity and mortality. However, the uptake and impact of behavioural interventions have been limited by methodological challenges. The International Behavioural Trials Network (IBTN) was established in 2013 to facilitate global improvement in methodological quality of behavioural trials. There has been no formal process, within the network or in the broader literature, to define the most important research priorities to achieve this aim. In this project, we will conduct an international, Delphi consensus study to identify and achieve consensus on priorities for methodological research in behavioural trials among IBTN members. Methods: Fifteen core members of IBTN, who are experts in the field of behavioural intervention research, will be invited to generate a list of all items they consider priority areas for methodological research in trials of behavioural interventions. The IBTN Research Prioritisation team (the authors) will review all items generated, removing duplicates and merging similar topics, and generate a ‘long-list’ of items. This long-list will be sent to the 15 IBTN core members for approval. We will then administer two online Delphi surveys to all IBTN members. In the first survey, respondents will be asked to rate the importance of each item on a nine-point scale and rank their top five priorities. In the second survey, respondents will receive feedback on others’ responses and a reminder of their own responses in survey 1, and will be asked to re-rate items and re-select their ‘top five’. Discussion: Findings from the project will be used to inform the research agenda of the IBTN and to make recommendations for future research.
Highlights
There is compelling evidence that behaviour change is central to global reduction of chronic disease prevalence, mortality, and burden of disease[1]
We added the following sentence at the end of the description in the methods section of the Delphi, phase 1: ‘The final list of items will be approved and agreed by the International Behavioural Trials Network (IBTN) Research Prioritisation Team.’
We provided a reference for Limesurvey software in the methods section
Summary
Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article. 4. We added the following sentence at the end of the description in the methods section of the Delphi, phase 1: ‘The final list of items will be approved and agreed by the IBTN Research Prioritisation Team.’. 6. We added the following sentence to clarify what was asked of participants within the e-Delphi survey: ‘Participants are asked to rate the perceived importance, from their own individual point of view, of the items for methodological research in trials of behavioural interventions.’. 8. In the dissemination section, we removed ‘at the IBTN Conference 2018’ and added detail about how data will be presented as follows: ‘Items will be reported according to importance ratings for individual research items in surveys 1 and 2. The findings will be written up following recent reporting guidelines.’
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