Developers: Claire Lane, Michelle Huws-Thomas, Kerenza Hood, Stephen Rollnick, Karen Edwards, Michael Robling

Year of publication: 2005

Date of last revision: 7 January 2021

Setting in which the tool was originally developed/validated: Any type of consultation involving behavior change counselling. The BECCI has been originally developed and validated mostly in simulated consultations, but it can also be applied to real consultations.

Restriction to setting(s): None

Target group: Any clinician/patient consultation involving behavior change counselling

Language(s): English

Translations(s): Dutch

Tool topics:

Health promotion / Health behaviour change

Specific constructs/behaviours:

1. The practitioner invites the patient to talk about behaviour change
2. The practitioner demonstrates sensitivity to talking about other issues
3. Practitioner encourages patient to talk about current behaviour or status
quo
4. Practitioner encourages patient to talk about behaviour change
5. Practitioner asks questions to elicit how patient thinks and feels about
the topic
6. Practitioner uses empathic listening statements when patient talks about
the topic
7. Practitioner uses summaries to bring together what the patient says
about the topic
8. Practitioner acknowledges challenges about behaviour change that the
patient faces
9.When practitioner provides information, it is sensitive to patient concerns
and understanding
10. Practitioner actively conveys respect for patient choice about behaviour
change
11. Practitioner and patient exchange ideas about how the patient could
change current behaviour

Additionally, the total practicioner talk time is scored.

Intended application: Education, Research

Reference(s) to development/validation paper(s):

Lane, Claire, Michelle Huws-Thomas, Kerenza Hood, Stephen Rollnick, Karen Edwards, and Michael Robling. "Measuring adaptations of motivational interviewing: the development and validation of the behavior change counseling index (BECCI)." Patient education and counseling 56, no. 2 (2005): 166-173.

Tool/manual available: Yes.

Tool description by the author:

This was constructed as an initial effort to measure the skills involved in behaviour change counselling. Our goal was to help the trainer as well as the researcher. Hence the small number of items on the checklist, designed to help trainers evaluate skills acquired in training by examining recordings of consultations. It might even be used in training itself, as a springboard for discussion and practice.

Who can use BECCI?
To use BECCI, the rater should have a good basic knowledge of Behaviour Change Counselling and the checklist. To ensure this, raters should undertake background reading, watch a training video and gain an understanding of how the checklist works.

Item choice
BECCI contains items that concentrate mainly on practitioner behaviours. We realise that the main goal of BCC is to encourage the patient to talk about the how and why of change. However, the checklist is designed to assess the skills of practitioners, and it is not reliable to assess the practitioner’s performance based on the patient’s behaviour in the consultation.

Access: Public

Contact: Dr. Claire Lane