ArticleWellcome open research2023
An ontology of mechanisms of action in behaviour change interventions.
Article in Wellcome open research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Universal interventions to improve young children's mental well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological bulletin · 2026Pooled it
- A meta-analysis of the effect of visiting zoos and aquariums on visitors' conservation knowledge, beliefs, and behavior.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Pooled it
- A social cascades model of addiction: Examining effects of psychological interventions on social and substance use outcomes via meta-analytic review.Psychological bulletin · 2026Article
- A Scoping Review of the Mechanisms Influencing Socioeconomic Disparities in Outcomes of Digital Interventions for Weight-Related Behaviors.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2026Article
- Implementation science and the clinical trial workforce: A national needs assessment of training and practice.Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2026Article
- Digital Episodic Future Thinking Intervention (Luminaut): Co-Design and Iterative Development Study.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
- Behavior change beyond intervention: an activity-theoretical perspective on human-centered design of personal health technology.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Article
- Navigating the complexity: a comment on difficulties in conducting systematic reviews to evaluate the effectiveness of behaviour change interventions.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2025Article
- Measuring processes of change in behavioural interventions: Insights gained from linking mechanisms of action to associated measures.British journal of health psychology · 2025Article
- Multidomain Behavioral Change Digital Coaching for Chronic Disease Management in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: Framework Development and Preliminary Evaluation.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- The Consolidated Approach to Intervention Adaptation (CLARION): Developing and undertaking an empirically and theoretically driven intervention adaptation.Implementation science communications · 2025Article
- Between heuristic and deliberative thinking: a multi-center qualitative study of physicians' decision-making in infection prevention practice.Antimicrobial resistance and infection control · 2025Article
- Development and evaluation of the COntextualised and Personalised Physical activity and Exercise Recommendations (COPPER) Ontology.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2025Article
- Linking behaviour change techniques to mechanisms of action: Using the Theory and Techniques Tool alongside the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology.Wellcome open research · 2025Article
- A research agenda to advance the study of implementation mechanisms.Implementation science communications · 2024Article
- Linking measures to mechanisms of action in behavior change: A qualitative analysis of expert views.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2024Article
- Investigating the effect of providing monetary incentives to participants on completion rates of referred co-respondents: An embedded randomized controlled trial.Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2024Article
- An analysis of physical activity coping plans: mapping barriers and coping strategies based on user ratings.Health psychology and behavioral medicine · 2024Article
- From smoking cessation to physical activity: Can ontology-based methods for automated evidence synthesis generalise across behaviour change domains?Wellcome open research · 2024Article
- "It doesn't matter if we're the most amazing professionals in the world…" A qualitative study of professionals' perspectives on parent-child interaction assessment with deaf infants.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Background: Behaviour change interventions influence behaviour through causal processes called "mechanisms of action" (MoAs). Reports of such interventions and their evaluations often use inconsistent or ambiguous terminology, creating problems for searching, evidence synthesis and theory development. This inconsistency includes the reporting of MoAs. An ontology can help address these challenges by serving as a classification system that labels and defines MoAs and their relationships. The aim of this study was to develop an ontology of MoAs of behaviour change interventions. Methods: To develop the MoA Ontology, we (1) defined the ontology's scope; (2) identified, labelled and defined the ontology's entities; (3) refined the ontology by annotating (i.e., coding) MoAs in intervention reports; (4) refined the ontology via stakeholder review of the ontology's comprehensiveness and clarity; (5) tested whether researchers could reliably apply the ontology to annotate MoAs in intervention evaluation reports; (6) refined the relationships between entities; (7) reviewed the alignment of the MoA Ontology with other relevant ontologies, (8) reviewed the ontology's alignment with the Theories and Techniques Tool; and (9) published a machine-readable version of the ontology. Results: An MoA was defined as "a process that is causally active in the relationship between a behaviour change intervention scenario and its outcome behaviour". We created an initial MoA Ontology with 261 entities through Steps 2-5. Inter-rater reliability for annotating study reports using these entities was α=0.68 ("acceptable") for researchers familiar with the ontology and α=0.47 for researchers unfamiliar with it. As a result of additional revisions (Steps 6-8), 23 further entities were added to the ontology resulting in 284 entities organised in seven hierarchical levels. Conclusions: The MoA Ontology extensively captures MoAs of behaviour change interventions. The ontology can serve as a controlled vocabulary for MoAs to consistently describe and synthesise evidence about MoAs across diverse sources.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.