Behaviour Change Interventions: Introductory Principles and Practice

Learn how to change important behaviours in your personal or professional life

People all over the world are facing multiple serious threats to their well-being. From global warming to the burden of chronic disease, there is a need for different disciplines and professionals to work together towards a common purpose of helping people to behave differently.

On this course, you’ll be supported to think about problems in terms of behaviours and apply principles and practices that can enable change.

Discover why behavioural science is important

Using frameworks based on behavioural science, you’ll learn a systematic method for developing interventions.

You’ll consider how to define a behaviour, and then see how to distinguish behaviours from what influences them and the outcomes they lead to.

Explore behaviour change tools

You’ll be introduced to three behavioural science tools, understand how they link together, and how they can be applied. You will also learn how to select key behaviours from a ‘system’ of behaviours.

As you find out how to think about behaviours in their context, you’ll conduct a ‘behavioural diagnosis’ to understand what influences them, and develop appropriate intervention strategies.

To understand behaviours and design interventions to change them, you will become familiar with the Capability Opportunity Motivation – Behaviour (COM-B) model, the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW), and the Behaviour Change Techniques Taxonomy (BCTT).

From behavioural science interventions to policies

Behavioural science experts at UCL will guide you through different types of behaviour change intervention and related policy options.

You’ll leave this course understanding key principles and practices of behaviour change. You’ll learn how to apply these to the problems you want to tackle and emerge confident about how to change behaviours for the better.

This course is designed for learners who would like an entry-level understanding of behaviour change. If you want to know more about behaviour and how to change it to create a healthy and happy population, and a sustainable world, this course is for you.

• Defining and selecting behaviours to change
• Welcome to the course
• Defining behaviour
• Identifying targets for behaviour change
• Choosing a target behaviour
• Specifying a target behaviour
• Round-up of week 1
• Introduction to the COM-B model
• Welcome to week 2
• Understanding behaviour in context
• Using COM-B to carry out a diagnosis
• Peer Review
• Round-up of week 2
• Selecting Intervention Types and Policy Options in intervention design
• Welcome to week 3
• Intervention types: What are they?
• Selecting intervention types for intervention design
• Policy options: What are they?
• Selecting policy options for intervention design
• The APEASE criteria
• Peer Review
• Round-up of week 3
• Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) – selecting for intervention design
• Welcome to week 4
• BCTs, what are they?
• Selecting BCTs for intervention design
• Introducing the MY COMRADE intervention
• Course round-up and what happens next?