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Books written by CBC staff or associates. You can order all books online using the available links.
CBC Publications
CBC staff, researchers and behaviour change experts publish extensively each year. Click the links below to view outputs and publication details.
Click to view CBC publications for 2020
CBC Bookshop
The Behaviour Change Wheel: A guide to designing interventions
Michie, S, Atkins, L, West, R. (2014)
Silverback Publishing. London. UK
Written by Professor Susan Michie, Dr Lou Atkin, and Professor Robert West, the Behaviour Change Wheel Guide is written to be useable across a wide range of disciplines, types of expertise and approaches. It puts "flesh on the bones" of good practice guidelines, such as the UK's Medical Research Council's (MRC) guidance on how to systematically develop and evaluate complex interventions, including ensuring that development is informed by relevant theories and interventions are specified by their component behaviour change techniques. The Guide provides a practical, step-by-step method, illustrated by examples from a wide range of domains and disciplines.
A Guide to Development and Evaluation of Digital Behaviour Change Interventions in Healthcare
Michie, S. & West, R (2016)
Silverback Publishing. London. UK
Behaviour change interventions are increasingly being delivered through digital channels including websites, smartphone apps, and wearables. While these new channels of delivery offer huge opportunities for novel and personalised interventions, they also come with their own challenges and difficulties. Written by Professors Susan Michie and Robert West, this guide provides a systematic approach to the development of digital interventions. It covers personalised and just-in-time interventions as well as general intervention design and evaluation. This monograph is an ideal starting point for anyone wanting to understand more about digital behaviour change interventions, offering references and links for more in depth reading on each of the topics discussed.
Thinking about Behaviour Change: an interdisciplinary dialogue
Christmas, S., Michie, S., West, R. [Eds]. (2015.)
Silverback Publishing. London. UK
How should we think about and understand human behaviour? What's the role of theoretical models? How can - and should - such models be used in practice? And what can we learn from the many different academic and practical perspectives on the subject? This book, aimed at anyone with an interest in behaviour change, offers a fresh and challenging take on these questions. Written by CBC Associate, Dr Simon Christmas, this book comprises a Dialogue, which sets out key debates in a lively and accessible way, and 21 commentaries written from a wide range of standpoints, including academic, commercial and public sector.
Energise: The Secrets of Motivation
West, R., West, J. (2019)
Silverback Publishing. London. UK
In this popular book, Professor Robert West explores the science behind motivation, delving into the Machiavellian art of persuasion and examining the roles that incentives, praise+ and punishment play in our society.
This lively and humorous book reveals simple yet game-changing principles that will transform your understanding of motivation and set you on a practical path to achieving your personal and professional goals.
Associated publications
Theory of Addiction (2nd Edition)
West, R., Brown, J. (2013)
Wiley-Blackwell; 2nd edition
Addiction, the chronic condition where there is an unhealthily powerful motivation to engage in a particular behaviour, can be driven by many different factors, physiological, psychological, environmental and social. Some people think addicts are using drugs to escape from unhappy lives, feelings of anxiety and so on; many are. Some people think drugs become addictive because they alter the brain chemistry to create powerful urges; that is often true. Others think that drug taking is about seeking after pleasure; often it is. Some take the view that addiction is a choice addicts weigh up the pros and cons of doing what they do and decide the former outweigh the latter. Yet others believe that addicts suffer from poor impulse control; that is often true. And so it goes on. When you look at the evidence, you see that all these positions capture important aspects of the problem but they are not complete explanations.
Neuroscience can help us delve more deeply into some of these explanations, while the behavioural and social sciences are better at exploring others. We need a model that puts all this together in a way that can help us decide what to do in different cases. Should we prescribe a drug, give the person some tender loving care, put them in prison or what? Theory of Addiction provides this synthesis. Written by Professors Robert West and Jamie Brown.
Find out more about PRIME Theory at: www.primetheory.com
The Smoke Free Formula
Written by Robert West, the SmokeFree Formula is a guide to stopping smoking. It explains why it is hard for smokers to stop and identifies 29 ingredients that smokers can put into their own formula for stopping, each one with a star rating denoting the strength of evidence to support it.
Robert West is a world authority on smoking and addiction and has been helping smokers stop for more than 30 years. He has been a long term advisor to the Department of Health and helped set up the NHS Stop Smoking Services.
Written with Chris Smyth, Health Correspondent at The Times, and Jamie West.