Background: Shared decision making (SDM) requires health professionals to change their practice. Socio-cognitive theories, such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), provide the needed theoretical underpinnings for designing behaviour change interventions.
Objective: We systematically reviewed studies that used the TPB to assess SDM behaviours in health professionals to explore how theory is being used to explain influences on SDM intentions and/or behaviours, and which construct is identified as most influential.
Search strategy: We searched PsycINFO, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Index to theses, Proquest dissertations and Current Contents for all years up to April 2012.
Inclusion criteria: We included all studies in French or English that used the TPB and related socio-cognitive theories to assess SDM behavioural intentions or behaviours in health professionals. We used Makoul & Clayman's integrative SDM model to identify SDM behaviours.
Data extraction and synthesis: We extracted study characteristics, nature of the socio-cognitive theory, SDM behaviour, and theory-based determinants of the SDM behavioural intention or behaviour. We computed simple frequency counts.
Main results: Of 12,388 titles, we assessed 136 full-text articles for eligibility. We kept 20 eligible studies, all published in English between 1996 and 2012. Studies were conducted in Canada (n = 8), the USA (n = 6), the Netherlands (n = 3), the United Kingdom (n = 2) and Australia (n = 1). The determinant most frequently and significantly associated with intention was the subjective norm (n = 15/21 analyses).
Discussion: There was great variance in the way socio-cognitive theories predicted SDM intention and/or behaviour, but frequency of significance indicated that subjective norm was most influential.
Keywords: Theory of Planned Behaviour; Theory of Reasoned Action; implementation; patient-centred care; shared decision making; social cognitive theories.
© 2014 The Authors Health Expectations Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.