ABSTRACT
Physical activity behaviours have often been difficult to change, particularly in the long term. Intervention research that attempts to manipulate correlates to facilitate behaviour change offers much stronger evidence than cross-sectional designs. This chapter, therefore, enables the reader to gain an understanding of various issues concerning interventions to change physical activity. Subsequent chapters focus on the evidence concerning the outcomes of interventions for young people and adults. The current chapter highlights key issues in the design and evaluation of physical activity behaviour change interventions. It does this by considering different frameworks for intervention design and evaluation, including the Medical Research Council’s guidance for complex interventions, intervention mapping and the RE-AIM framework. It also discusses the importance of theory; the Behaviour Change Wheel and Theoretical Domains Framework; the nature and use of various behaviour change techniques; and the importance of mediation analysis and process evaluation. We also provide a short note on the use of natural experiments.
