Welcome to the Behavioural Science Group at the Primary Care Unit.

The Behavioural Science Group was established in 2001, and is headed by Prof. Stephen Sutton.

Our core research activity involves developing and evaluating interventions to change behaviour. We develop our interventions based on evidence from systematic reviews, relevant theory, and careful formative research with the target population, and we evaluate them in Randomised Controlled Trials, with objective as well as self-report measures of behaviour.

We focus on the following behaviours:  physical activity, smoking cessation, medication adherence, alcohol use and diet.

We use two main intervention approaches: brief face-to-face interventions delivered by health care professionals; and ‘digital’ interventions, including text messaging, smartphone apps and interactive voice response. Some of our interventions have both a face-to-face and a digital component.  Some of our interventions are generic (everyone gets the same intervention), but many are highly tailored with millions of different possible interventions. Both these approaches are cheap to deliver, potentially cost-effective and scalable – meaning that they can be applied on a large scale.

Please see the Research Themes, for more information about each health behaviour and related research projects.

Follow us on Twitter @BSG_Cambridge