Journal
THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 32, Issue 6, Pages 915-930Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/09593543221113263
Keywords
auxiliary assumptions; health behavior change; intervention effectiveness; theory of planned behavior; theory-based interventions
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The use of theory in health behavior change interventions has been questioned, and it is found that intervention failures are often due to flaws in auxiliary assumptions rather than theoretical assumptions. The importance of auxiliary assumptions in assessing the effectiveness of interventions informed by theory is illustrated using the theory of planned behavior.
The use of theory in health behavior change interventions has been recently questioned with mixed results found for theory-based intervention effectiveness. But theory testing in intervention depends on not only theoretical assumptions, but on auxiliary assumptions too. Specifically, auxiliary assumptions are required to traverse the distance from nonobservational terms in theories and observational terms at the level of the empirical hypotheses in interventions. We believe intervention failures are often due to flaws in auxiliary assumptions rather than assumptions at the theoretical level. We use the theory of planned behavior to illustrate how the consideration of these auxiliary assumptions is important to appraise the effectiveness of interventions informed by theory. We hope that bringing attention to the importance of auxiliary assumptions provides a more nuanced and accurate appraisal of theory utility.
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