Dataset
SOCIAL 89,10was a systematic review of randomised controlled trials, looking at the effect of social norms interventions on the clinical behaviour of health care workers, where a social norms intervention is defined as ‘an intervention which aims to change the behaviour of an individual by exposing them to the values, beliefs, attitudes or behaviours of a reference group or person’(Tang, 2021, p.2) This review looked at the effects of any social norms intervention on any type of clinical behaviour, and aimed to answer an overall question about the effectiveness of social norms interventions, as well as more specific questions related to different types of intervention, settings, contexts and behaviour.
The SOCIAL systematic review included 102 unique trials that assessed the effect of a social norms intervention on the clinical behaviour of health workers. For ease of presentation, here we focus on a subset: 16 trials that assessed the effect of ‘credible source’ interventions either alone or alongside other interventions. A credible source intervention provides communication either in favour of or against a particular behaviour by a person generally agreed on as credible with the aim of persuading the recipient1. For example Hallsworth 11 include a persuasive letter from the Chief Medical Officer in their intervention to reduce antibiotic prescriptions amongst high prescribing GPs.
Note that 2 of these 16 trials had more than two arms that tested the effect of a credible source intervention, so there were 18 different comparisons included. Table 1 shows the units of randomisation and analysis and how they vary by study.
The SOCIAL review found that social norms interventions appeared to be an effective method of changing the clinical behaviour of healthcare workers, with credible source interventions appearing to be most effective on average10.