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.