"Is there nothing more practical than a good theory?": Why innovations and advances in health behavior change will arise
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BioMed Central
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"Is there nothing more practical than a good theory?": Why innovations and advances in health behavior change will arise if interventions are used to test and refine theory Alexander J Rothman* Address: Department of Psychology University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN USA Email: Alexander J Rothman* - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 27 July 2004 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2004, 1:11
doi:10.1186/1479-5868-1-11
Received: 22 June 2004 Accepted: 27 July 2004
This article is available from: http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/1/1/11 © 2004 Rothman; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Theoretical and practical innovations are needed if we are to advance efforts to persuade and enable people to make healthy changes in their behavior. In this paper, I propose that progress in our understanding of and ability to promote health behavior change depends upon greater interdependence in the research activities undertaken by basic and applied behavioral scientists. In particular, both theorists and interventionists need to treat a theory as a dynamic entity whose form and value rests upon it being rigorously applied, tested and refined in both the laboratory and the field. To this end, greater advantage needs to be taken of the opportunities that interventions afford for theory-testing and, moreover, the data generated by these activities need to stimulate and inform efforts to revise, refine, or reject theoretical principles.
Background Even with the dramatic advances in our understanding of the biological processes that determine health and illness, it has never been more clear that rates of disease morbidity and premature mortality reflect people's behavioral practices. [1] The benefits, both for individuals and the societies in which they live, that would come from systematic improvements in diet, physical activity, and use of substances such as tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs are tantalizing and provide ample motivation to develop initiatives to elicit changes in health behavior. Yet, health behavior change has proven a worthy adversary. Despite the commitment of considerable time and effort, innovations and advances in our ability to improve health behaviors have been modest. In particular, the specification of methods that produce sustained improvements in behavior have been elusive [2-5]. At the same time, innovations in theories of health behavior have also been modest.
Investigators continue to advocate for a broad range of theories and there has been limited progress in demonstrating the unique value of any specific theory. [6-8] Although there may be consensus in the professional community that there are considerable gaps in our understanding of hea
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