Compendium of dyadic intervention techniques (DITs) to change health behaviours: a systematic review

Figures & data

Figure 1. Continuum of dyadic interventions.

Table 1. Definitions and examples of different prototypes of dyadic interventions.

	Definition	Example
(1) Shared presence	Interventions in which both partners receive an intervention and/or are present during an intervention, but the two partners do not explicitly interact with each other.
a) Mere presence	Interventions in which both partners are present and attend the intervention, but at least one partner has no active role or task and receives information only passively.	Both partners jointly attend an education lesson and one partner receives an individual intervention task, e.g., individual planning.
b) Parallel	Interventions in which both partners perform a task in parallel without interacting with each other; i.e., both partners receive an intervention and have an active role or task beyond just passively receiving information, but do not interact with each other.	Both partners jointly attend an education lesson and both partners receive an individual intervention task, e.g., individual planning.
(2) Instructed interaction	Interventions in which both partners are explicitly asked to interact with or refer to each other during intervention delivery or subsequent implementation, with either one partner being instructed to interact with or refer to the other partner in some way or with both partners jointly performing an intervention task.
a) Cross-over	Interventions that are directed at one partner who is explicitly asked to interact with or clearly refer to the other partner during intervention delivery or subsequent implementation, but that do not have to be administered to both partners.	One partner is instructed to provide support to the other partner. One partner is instructed to recognise health consequences from the other partner’s drinking behaviour.
b) Joint	Interventions that actively involve both partners during intervention delivery. Accordingly, joint dyadic techniques cannot be implemented if only one dyad member is present.	Both partners sign a joint behavioural contract. Both partners engage in collaborative planning. Both partners engage in a joint discussion about their health behaviours.

Figure 2. Prisma flowchart of the study selection process.

Table 2. Compendium of dyadic intervention techniques to change health behaviours.

Notes: Legend and respective numbers in the cells show frequencies of use of the dyadic intervention techniques to change health behaviour across n = 122 interventions, ranging from n = 1 – n = 25. Mutually executed dyadic intervention techniques are indicated with an asterix (*) in the respective cells. The following techniques from the Behavioral Change Taxonomy (BCT, Michie et al., 2013) and from the Intervention Mapping Taxonomy (IM Taxonomy, Kok et al., 2016) overlap with techniques from the present compendium: ¹ BCT: pros and cons, ² BCT: Information about health consequences, IM: consciousness raising, personalised risk, ³ BCT: social reward (outcome or behaviour), material reward, non-specific reward IM: provide contingency rewards, ⁴ BCT: remove reward, ⁵ BCT: incentive, ⁶ BCT: goal setting (behavioural outcome), IM: goal setting, ⁷ BCT: commitment, ⁸ BCT: review goals, ⁹ BCT: behavioural contract, ¹⁰ BCT: prompts/cues, IM: cue altering, ¹¹ BCT: reduce prompts/cues, restructuring the social environment, restructuring the physical environment, IM: stimulus control, ¹² BCT: action planning, IM: implementation intentions, ¹³ BCT: problem solving: barrier identification without solution is not sufficient, IM: planning coping responses, participatory problem solving, ¹⁴ BCT: monitoring of behaviour by others with/without feedback, IM: self-monitoring of behaviour, ¹⁵ BCT: behavioral substitution, IM: counterconditioning, ¹⁶ BCT: behavioural practice/rehearsal, IM: counter conditioning, ¹⁷ IM: modelling, ¹⁸ IM: shifting perspective, ¹⁹ BCT: social support (practical), ²⁰ BCT: social support (emotional), ²¹ BCT: social support (unspecified), ²² IM: mobilising social support, mobilising social networks, ²³ IM: persuasive communication, coercion. ^† Labels and definitions originate from the TDF (Atkins et al., 2017; Cane et al., 2012).

Figure 3. Frequency of interventions per prototype of dyadic interventions.

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