Sarah Osman
You’ve completed collecting your data. You’ve identified the key barriers. Now comes the most crucial part: making sure that you use the right behaviour change technique to design your intervention.
Most people struggle with this step because it requires an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings as well as the ability to turn a concept into a concrete, actionable project idea.
Here’s a quick guide to help you move from insight to action, using the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) and practical examples of Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) that align with the barriers you’ve identified.
Start by identifying the specific behaviour you want to influence. The more concrete you are, the easier it will be to design something meaningful. For example, instead of saying “Improve hygiene,” aim for “Increase handwashing with soap after using the toilet among school-aged children.” Behaviour change starts with clarity: who needs to do what, when, and where.
Once the behaviour is defined, use the COM-B model to understand why the behaviour isn’t happening. Is it a capability issue (they don’t know how or lack the skills)? Is it a lack of opportunity (the environment or social norms don’t support it)? Or is it a motivation issue (people don’t see the value or are acting out of habit)? This step is all about insight. You can’t change a behaviour effectively if you don’t know what’s standing in the way.
Now that you’ve identified the core barrier, turn to the Behaviour Change Wheel to see which intervention functions (the green areas) are best suited to address it. For example, if the barrier is reflective motivation, persuasive communication or education might be appropriate. If it’s physical opportunity, environmental restructuring or enablement could be more effective. This is the bridge between diagnosis and action: it narrows down your options to the most strategic pathways.
Once you’ve identified the appropriate intervention function, choose a specific behaviour change technique that brings it to life. For example, under persuasion, you might choose “emotional storytelling”; under enablement, you might choose “guided practice.” If you’re not sure which technique fits, you can use a reference guide like the Theory and Techniques Tool. This step is about being deliberate and it ensures your project is grounded in evidence, not just creativity.
Here’s where theory becomes practice. Translate the selected BCT into a concrete activity that makes sense in your context. If you’ve chosen modelling, for instance, you might create a community-led programme where respected local figures demonstrate healthy behaviours, like regular exercise or exclusive breastfeeding. If you’ve chosen self-reevaluation, you could run a visualisation exercise in which participants reflect on their future selves with and without behaviour change. This is the moment when ideas become real and when your work becomes relevant to the people you’re designing for.
One of the most common missteps in behaviour change programming is assuming that more education is the solution to everything. It’s not. In fact, education, training, and knowledge-building are only useful when the barrier is genuinely about psychological capability: when people don’t know how or why to do something.
In most cases, people already know what they should be doing, the issue is that the environment doesn’t support it, the motivation isn’t strong enough, or social norms are working against it. That’s why it’s so important to start with the barrier, not the intervention.
Use education strategically, not automatically. And always pair it with other techniques that tackle motivation, opportunity, and context, because that’s where real behaviour change happens.
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