Introduction

In this opening chapter, we overview a scientific approach to behavior change relevant to health promoting (e.g., exercise), health risk (e.g., smoking) and health checking (e.g., attending health screening) behaviors. This approach cycles through a process involving theory selection, application of theory consistent with its underlying principles, selection of behavior change techniques to change behavioral determinants, using methods to minimize bias, applying appropriate statistical techniques to analyze the resulting data and systematic reporting. Over time, this process should help identify what works, when and how, as well as facilitate the identification of strong and weak theories.