St Mary’s Research Fellow Publishes Work on Motivational Interviewing

Dr Katie Morton, Research Fellow in the School of Sport, Health and Applied Science (SHAS) at St Mary’s University, Twickenham has had a paper examining Motivational Interviewing (MI) accepted into ‘Health Psychology Review’ journal. In this systematic review paper, The effectiveness of motivational interviewing for health behaviour change in primary care settings: a systematic review, Dr Morton along with colleagues at St Mary’s examined the evidence for MI interventions to achieve behaviour change for physical activity, dietary behaviours and/or alcohol intake. MI is a patient-centred approach to behaviour change that has been frequently utilised in many public health initiatives including those delivered within the Centre for Workplace and Community Health (CWCH) at St Mary’s. This review highlighted mixed evidence for MI effectiveness, concluding that more rigorous and systematic development and evaluation of MI interventions is required. This includes a greater attention to developing and piloting the intervention content using standardised descriptors and language, improved study designs that isolate the effects of the intervention, the use of objective measures of behaviour, and the inclusion of process measures to enhance the validity of findings. Katie Morton said, “This project was a real team effort and we are delighted that it has now been accepted for publication. I think the review highlights some of the complexities and challenges associated with the development and evaluation of behaviour change initiatives and we can hopefully build on these findings to continually improve the quality of the projects we deliver.” St Mary’s Centre for Workplace and Community Health is a centre of excellence offering health improvement projects within the community and workplaces. Following on from this research paper, future projects within the Centre that focus on the delivery of health behaviour change initiatives using MI will adhere to the recommendations put forward in this review paper. The review paper was contributed by Katie Morton, Mark Beauchamp, Anna Prothero, Lauren Joyce, Laura Saunders, Sarah Spencer-Bowdage, Bernadette Dancy and Dr Charles Pedlar. To view the paper, please visit the Health Psychology Review website.