Mahdi, S., Michalik-Denny, E. and Buckland, N. orcid.org/0000-0002-3667-6438 (2022) Improving children’s dietary intake: mapping behaviour change techniques onto the Change4Life Food Scanner app. Appetite, 179. 106196. ISSN 0195-6663
Abstract
Despite the growing rise in dietary digital interventions, the majority are not evidence-based. The Change4Life Food Scanner app was designed to raise awareness of the nutritional content of packaged foods. The app has undergone multiple changes since its release including content and design feature updates. To understand its intended mechanism of behaviour change and how evidence-based behaviour change techniques (BCTs) or strategies evolve with app updates, this research aimed to map out and compare BCTs of two versions of the Change4Life Food Scanner app. This will provide insight into the use of potentially effective BCTs within behavioural interventions and inform future app development. Two independent coders undertook a descriptive comparative analysis of the use of BCTs in two versions of the Food Scanner app using the BCT Taxonomy. Results showed that the outdated version consisted of eight BCTs, whilst the updated version consisted of eleven and was comparatively more BCT intensive in terms of content and occurrence. Both versions incorporated ‘goal setting (behavior)’, ‘feedback on behavior’, ‘social support (unspecified)’, ‘instruction on how to perform behavior’, ‘salience of consequences’, ‘prompts/cues’ and ‘credible source’. Almost 70% of the BCTs used in the Food Scanner app have previously been found to be effective for changing behaviour. However, who uses the app and how the app is used could impact on the exposure and effect of BCTs on dietary intake. Future work to evaluate the effectiveness of the app is recommended to provide insight into whether the combination of BCTs used are effective in improving children’s diets.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 Elsevier. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Appetite. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Behaviour Change Techniques; dietary digital intervention |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Health and Related Research (Sheffield) > ScHARR - Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 09 Nov 2023 16:09 |
Last Modified: | 10 Sep 2024 00:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier BV |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.appet.2022.106196 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:205137 |