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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutritional Epidemiology
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1457708
This article is part of the Research Topic Nutrition Counseling for Non-Communicable Disease Management View all articles

Exploring how researchers consider nutrition trial design and participant adherence: a theory-based analysis Authors

Provisionally accepted
Anna Worthington Anna Worthington 1*Taylor Coffey Taylor Coffey 2Katie Gillies Katie Gillies 2Rajshri Roy Rajshri Roy 3Andrea Braakhuis Andrea Braakhuis 1
  • 1 The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
  • 2 Health Services Research Unit, School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom
  • 3 Susan Wakil School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Nutrition trials are important for informing dietary and clinical guidelines. Central to the success of these trials is participant adherence to dietary behaviours. However, trials commonly experience poor adherence. This study seeks to understand if and how researchers consider supporting participant adherence to dietary behaviours and their relationship to using behaviour change science when designing trials.A mapping exercise was undertaken to create matrices that describe the landscape of current nutrition trials. From this, a pool of researchers (n=12) participated in semi-structured, one-on-one interviews. Transcripts were analysed using (i) the theoretical domains framework (TDF) to identify themes in current practice and beliefs, and (ii) the capability, opportunity, motivation, behaviour model to identify barriers and enablers to using behaviour change science in the design of nutrition trials.Twenty-two belief statements were identified across all 14 TDF domains and were conceptualised as five key themes with respect to designing nutrition trials to improve participant adherence: (i) what was done, (ii) how it was done, (iii) why it was done, (iv) adherence challenges, and (v) conflicting beliefs. Regarding using behaviour change science when designing trials, some researchers felt this would be beneficial, but lacked the knowledge and skills to do so, while others were sceptical of its value over current experience-based practice.Researchers are motivated to encourage participant adherence to dietary behaviours, and, consciously and subconsciously, implement a range of strategies through non-systematic methods in their trials. Future publications would benefit from the explicit documentation of levels of adherence to dietary behaviours and strategies implemented to improve adherence.

    Keywords: patient adherence, Nutrition trials, Behaviour change science, methods, Research Design, Treatment adherence and compliance

    Received: 22 Sep 2024; Accepted: 28 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Worthington, Coffey, Gillies, Roy and Braakhuis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Anna Worthington, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.