What is an intervention

Question 1

What is an intervention?

Answer 1

any action intended to interfere with and stop a process or alter the course of the pathological process of disease

Question 2

What is selection of intervention?

Answer 2

guided by the nature of the problem, the orientation of the therapist, the setting, and the willingness and ability of the client to proceed with the treatment.

Question 3

What is research design?

Answer 3

an experimental manipulation.

Question 4

What is theory used to help decide?

Answer 4

what factors most important to focus on to help solve problem

Question 5

Why does theory need to be evaluated?

Answer 5

see whether they produce expected changes, RCT & compare the intervention against something else

Question 6

Give an example of an intervention

Answer 6

Change4Life
Public Health England (PHE) campaign launched in 2009

Question 7

What does the example aim to do?

Answer 7

aimed â childhood obesity
- Targeted parents and primary school children

Question 8

What are the problems of the example?

Answer 8

‒ 61% of adults and 28% of children were obese
‒ Obesity associated with árisk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease
‒ Cost NHS over 5 billion every year

Question 9

What is Public Health England (PHE) campaign intervention?

Answer 9

Encourage people to be more active, and eat and drink more healthily through education and advice

Question 10

What is the point of Public Health England (PHE) campaign ?

Answer 10

to reduce weight, and therefore associated health problems and and costs.

Question 11

What is the effectiveness of Public Health England?

Answer 11

Hard to find evidence for this
Difficult to evaluate public health campaigns such as finding a control group not exposed to intervention
- measure key variables before and after implementation but difficult to control for potential cofounding factors

Question 12

Evaluation of Public Health England?

Answer 12

Croker et al (2012)- randomised controlled trial of Change4Life campaign, increased awareness, but little change in attitudes or behaviour
Wrieden & Levy (2016)- quasi-experimental study, short-term behaviour change ( smart swaps ) but not in long term

Question 13

Give an Intervention group?

Answer 13

‒ Families in England who had signed up to Smart Swaps
‒ Received a Smart Swaps sign-up pack – info on items containing fat and sugar

Question 14

Give an Comparison group?

Answer 14

‒ Families in Wales – no sign-up facility available
Data collected via an app once per week for 3 weeks
Higher percentage of families in Intervention had made healthy swaps

Question 15

Explain behavioural activation?

Answer 15

Form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Focuses more directly on the behavioural aspects of a condition.

Question 16

Steps of Behavioural Activation?

Answer 16

1. Experience
2. Emotional distress
3. Positive coping strategy
4. Increased opportunity for positive experiences
5. (hopefully) problems get better

Question 17

Analysis of the person’s problem

Answer 17

Shared understanding, addressing of the “problem” behaviours that keep the person in the depressive cycle
Shared identification of meaningful, goal-oriented behaviours

Question 18

Problem of the persons problem

Answer 18

‒ Clinical depression is a recurrent, debilitating condition with a global prevalence of 16%
‒ In the UK, annual costs of depression and anxiety are around £17bn

Question 19

Evaluation of persons problem

Answer 19

• Depends on your hypothesis…