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Unique software supports behavioural intervention programmes

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The internet offers users a cost-effective way of accessing information and advice on any health problem, 24-hours a day. A group of social scientists has taken advantage of this by developing software which enables other researchers to easily create interactive internet-based intervention programmes to support behavioural change. The software, known as LifeGuide, is being used in intervention programmes, for example to quit smoking or manage weight loss.

LifeGuide is a flexible tool that can be used to give tailored health advice, help users make decisions about life choices, and support them in their efforts to maintain long-term change. It has been developed by scientists at the University of Southampton with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). As a measure of its popularity, in the last two years over 1,000 researchers worldwide have registered to use LifeGuide.

"Interventions designed to influence behaviour are a part of many people's daily life, such as personal advice, support and training from professionals, or general information provided by the media. However, advice and support can be costly and may not always be readily available to everyone," says Professor Lucy Yardley who developed LifeGuide with colleagues. "But, the internet can give access to services offering information and advice on many health problems. Services can also be made interactive and individually tailored, and they can be set up to support people with reminders, feedback, action planning and chat rooms."

Despite the advantages of working online, until LifeGuide was introduced, researchers had to programme each internet-based behavioural intervention from scratch. Consequently, development costs were high  and systems were not easily modified once programmed.

"LifeGuide is a unique tool that enables researchers with no programming background to create interactive internet-based systems to support behaviour change," Professor Yardley continues. "Researchers don't need to employ special programmers and it can be readily modified to suit many different contexts."

It allows researchers to create and modify two important dimensions of behavioural interventions: providing tailored information and advice; and supporting sustained behaviour. The system also supports evaluation of interventions, such as online questionnaire assessment, and automatic follow-up.

For example, LifeGuide has been used as an application, looking at research on the prescription by doctors of antibiotics. Recently, a public health warning about over-prescription of antibiotics for minor infections was given by England's Chief Medical Officer. It was pointed out that antibiotics are increasingly losing their effectiveness as bacteria adapt and develop resistance.

While the public may feel they need antibiotics to ease infections, doctors have a responsibility to prescribe them only to people with a clear medical need. To ensure more sensible use of antibiotics for respiratory infections, Paul Little, Professor of Primary Care Research in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton and his colleagues have used LifeGuide to develop and tailor online communication training packages for health professionals in six EU countries. Professor Little says, "Using this software in the project made it easy and inexpensive to adapt our training materials for the different countries we are collaborating with."

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Notes for editors

  1. This release is based on early findings from 'Development and Evaluation of a Behavioural Intervention Grid (BI-Grid)' funded by the Economic and Social Research Council  and carried out by Professor Lucy Yardley and colleagues at the School of Psychology, University of Southampton. The project is part of an ESRC-funded national programme, Digital Social Research, which aims to maximise the uptake, use, and impact of digital technologies in social science.
  2. A University of Southampton team of social scientists and computer scientists worked collaboratively to develop the LifeGuide software. As part of the development, a series of workshops were held during which researchers from other institutions were consulted. Views were gathered on how LifeGuide could be made sufficiently flexible to address the requirements of a broad spectrum of behavioural-intervention research. Following the initial release of the software, an international network of researchers was recruited through workshops and demonstrations to work in partnership with the university. By applying it to a range of health problems, the researchers are evaluating LifeGuide and contributing to its ongoing development.
  3. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK's largest organisation for funding research on economic and social issues. It supports independent high quality research which has an impact on business, the public sector and the third sector. The ESRC's total budget for 2012/13 is £205 million. At any one time the ESRC supports over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and independent research institutes.

Sarah Nichols
Email: sarah.nichols@esrc.ac.uk
Telephone 01793 413122

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

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ESRC Economic and Social Research Council LifeGuide Tailored health advice