The CACTIS (COM-B Assessment Criteria To Intervention Strategy) tool aims to help behavioural researchers and practitioners to use the COM-B model and the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) to develop an intervention strategy.
It currently takes the form of a Google Sheets workbook, but we are working on a website that will provide more interactive support and get over the fact that some organisations block their employees from using Google assets.
When you access the tool, carefully read the instructions (accessed by the leftmost tab at the bottom).
If you are unable to use Google Sheets, then download the workbook as an Excel file. Unfortunately, Excel doesn’t allow multiple selections, so the BCT selection won’t work, but you can at least see how the COM-B questions map onto the Behaviour Change Techniques by viewing the ‘BCT list’ tab.
This is version 1.7.2 of the CACTIS Tool. Enhancements from version 1.6 are:
Each step in the process is now on a different tab to make it easier to see how to use the tool, to make it easier to use with smaller laptop screens and to provide additional space for explanations.
The potential COM-B targets are now phrased as targets (e.g., ‘Level of X’) rather than questions (e.g., ‘How much …’). This is to make it easier to see how these relate to users' ratings.
The BCTs are organised under 'Behaviour Change Wheel’ Intervention Functions (e.g., Education, Persuasion) so that it is clearer how each BCT fulfils that function. Many BCTs can fulfil more than one function and so are repeated. The fuller BCT description in the ‘BCT List’ tab reflects the particular BCT/Intervention Function combination, and it is this that is presented in the CACTIS Results tab and which provides the prompt for the AI stage of the process.
There are now fuller explanations for ‘Behavioural Goal’, ‘Intervention Setting’, ‘Target population …’ and each of the COM-B targets. These take the form of links to Google Docs, which will be updated as required in response to user feedback.
The ‘CACTIS Results’ tab provides a structured prompt that can be used with any AI system to obtain suggestions for the intervention strategy based on the information provided.
There are currently 27, instead of 26, COM-B targets with the inclusion of a sense of ‘agency’, which is different from confidence in ability to perform the behaviour.