Glossary
Self-monitoring of behavior
What is self-monitoring of behavior?
Self-monitoring of behavior means observing and recording what you do as part of an effort to change it. You might record whether you completed your planned reading session each day.
Actions and results
This technique records the action. Recording how many books you finished would instead track an outcome. A record kept only to collect research data is not classified as this behavior change technique.
Choosing what to record
Suppose the goal is to establish a reading routine. A yes/no entry for each planned session measures whether it happened. Recording minutes read measures duration. These answer different questions: someone could complete every session but spend much less time reading than intended.
Choose the measure to fit the behavior and define it before recording. If timing starts when the book opens, for example, decide how interruptions will be handled. Forgotten entries, estimates made days later, and an unattended timer can all make the record inaccurate. Reviewing a pattern therefore includes checking how the data were collected.
What the research shows
Michie and colleagues compared healthy-eating and physical-activity interventions. Programs combining self-monitoring with at least one other control-theory technique had larger average effects than the other programs examined.
Because this comparison involved packages of techniques, it cannot tell us how much of the difference came from self-monitoring alone.
The Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy defines self-monitoring of behavior as technique 2.3.