Use of behaviour change techniques by direct support professionals to support healthy lifestyle behaviour for people with moderate to profound intellectual disabilities.
Annelies Overwijk, Annette A J van der Putten, Cees P van der Schans and 3 others
PMID 33295116WHAT IT FOUND
Direct support professionals used many behaviour change techniques to support adults with intellectual disabilities, but relied on nine: feedback, instructions, doing together, rewards, environment changes, graded tasks, prompts and demonstration.
This describes daily support, not whether these techniques improve health.
Key findings
01Every direct support professional used behaviour change techniques, and 33 of the 42 techniques were observed.
02Nine techniques accounted for 116 of the 226 uniquely used techniques, and the most frequent were feedback on performance, instructions, doing together, rewards, environment changes, graded tasks, prompts and demonstration.
03No statistically significant difference was found in use of the top nine techniques between staff supporting people with moderate intellectual disabilities and staff supporting people with severe or profound intellectual disabilities (p = .093).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The sample was small, with 18 direct support professionals. The subgroup analysis used 8 professionals supporting people with moderate intellectual disabilities and 5 supporting people with severe or profound intellectual disabilities, so it cannot be generalized. Some recordings did not follow the planned number of observation days or times of day. The study observed technique use, not health outcomes, so it cannot show whether any technique improved lifestyle behaviour. The participants were heterogeneous, and the authors do not know whether staff used the techniques purposefully or which techniques were most promising.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by Hanzehogeschool Groningen and ZonMw.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that behaviour change techniques improve health outcomes. The study observed what direct support professionals used, not what happened to the people they supported.