Assessing treatment-as-usual provided to control groups in adherence trials: Exploring the use of an open-ended questionnaire for identifying behaviour change techniques

E.J.M. Oberje*, A.L. Dima, F.J. Pijnappel, J.M. Prins, M. de Bruin

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Objective: Reporting guidelines call for descriptions of control group support in equal detail as for interventions. However, how to assess the active content (behaviour change techniques (BCTs)) of treatment-as-usual (TAU) delivered to control groups in trials remains unclear. The objective of this study is to pre-test a method of assessing TAU in a multicentre cost-effectiveness trial of an HIV-treatment adherence intervention. Design: HIV-nurses (N = 21) completed a semi-structured open-ended questionnaire enquiring about TAU adherence counselling. Two coders independently coded BCTs. Main outcome measures: Completeness and clarity of nurse responses, inter-coder reliabilities and the type of BCTs reported were examined. Results: The clarity and completeness of nurse responses were adequate. Twenty-three of the 26 identified BCTs could be reliably coded (mean ¿ = .79; mean agreement rate = 96%) and three BCTs scored below ¿ = .60. Total number of BCTs reported per nurse ranged between 7 and 19 (M = 13.86, SD = 3.35). Conclusions: This study suggests that the TAU open-ended questionnaire is a feasible and reliable tool to capture active content of support provided to control participants in a multicentre adherence intervention trial. Considerable variability in the number of BCTs provided to control patients was observed, illustrating the importance of reliably collecting and accurately reporting control group support. KEYWORDS: behaviour change techniques; control group; randomised controlled trial; treatment-as-usual
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)897-910
JournalPsychology and Health
Volume30
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Keywords

  • active antiretroviral therapy
  • randomized-controlled-trials
  • hiv-infected patients
  • standardized patients
  • change interventions
  • care
  • quality
  • vignettes
  • outcomes
  • health

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