Specifying the Schedule of Delivery of Interventions within the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology

Abstract

Background Advancing and applying behavioural science requires clear, consistent and coherent descriptions of behaviour change interventions. Ontologies provide a means to do this and enable information to be computer-readable. This study aimed to develop an ontology describing the ‘schedule of delivery’ of behaviour change interventions within the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO). Methods The Behaviour Change Intervention Schedule of Delivery Ontology (BCISDO) was developed following the method developed for the BCIO: 1) defining the ontology’s scope through literature review, 2) specifying the entities, their labels, definitions and relationships, 3) refining the ontology by piloting its use in annotations, 4) stakeholder review of the ontology’s comprehensiveness and clarity; 5) inter-rater reliability testing through annotating intervention reports using the ontology; 6) specifying the relationships between classes; and 7) publishing a machine-readable version of the ontology. Results Schedule of Delivery was defined as ‘A behaviour change intervention attribute that is its temporal organisation’. The initial version comprised 9 classes (e.g., intervention temporal part, intervention duration). Following annotations, stakeholder review and team discussions, four classes were added. Inter-rater reliability was α= 0.54 for researchers familiar with the ontology and, following updates to the annotation guidance, α=0.60 (acceptable) for researchers unfamiliar with it. Differences were readily resolved through discussion. The results from inter-rater reliability and further team discussions led to additional changes in the ontology. The final ontology contains 49 classes; 14 refer to the duration and frequency of an intervention, its temporal parts and contact events, and 45 refer to their associated aggregation data items (e.g. mean, maximum). Conclusions The BCISDO provides a reliable means of describing the temporal organisation of behaviour change interventions. It is linked with other BCIO ontologies describing characteristics of delivery (e.g. mode of delivery), content and dose (i.e. the amount), contributing to the accumulation of evidence in behavioural science.