The Behaviour Change Wheel approach

Abstract

The Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) approach is a set of interrelated tools and principles intended to guide decision-making and facilitate systematic development of behavioural interventions. This chapter presents the four behavioural science tools of the BCW and demonstrates how they interlink and can be applied as a system for understanding behaviour and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementing new practices and/or changing existing practices in organizations, services and systems requires changes in individual (for example, health care professional) and collective (for example, clinical team) human behaviour. The implementation research literature contains multiple examples of how the BCW approach has been applied in different ways for different purposes. These include exploring implementation problems, designing and refining implementation interventions, conducting process evaluation of implementation interventions and synthesising implementation research. The authors report on ways in which the various tools have predominantly been used, with accompanying examples to illustrate objectives, methods and high-level outcomes.