Towards the end of 2024 I had the chance to take part in a podcast to discuss ontologies and their potential application to improve evidence synthesis in behavioural science. The episode hasn’t been officially released yet, as it’s part of a new podcast and the host is waiting to record a few more interviews before going live. However, I’ve been given permission to share it here on my blog (the episode is just missing the introduction). I hope you enjoy it!

Timestamps

·         01:00 Behaviour change interventions

·         04:40 What is evidence synthesis and the role of systematic reviews

·         09:07 What is an ontology

·         11:35 How ontologies can improve evidence synthesis of behaviour change interventions

·         17:25 New data analysis techniques enabled by the use of ontologies

·         20:45 Coding behaviour change interventions ontologically

·         22:56 How the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology was developed

·         27:45 What happens with the coding when the ontology is updated

·         28:56 Future of research in this area

·         32:54 To know more about ontologies

·         33:45 Other potential applications of ontologies in behavioural science aside from evidence synthesis

Some resources mentioned during the podcast

·         Behaviour Change Technique Ontology website: https://www.bciontology.org/

·         Human Behaviour Change Project (HBCP) website: https://www.humanbehaviourchange.org/

·         HBCP’s Wellcome Open collection: https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/gateways/humanbehaviourchange/about

·         Our position paper: Castro, O., Mair, J. L., von Wangenheim, F., & Kowatsch, T. (2024). Taking behavioral science to the next level: Opportunities for the use of ontologies to enable artificial intelligence-driven evidence synthesis and prediction. In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024), 2, 671-678 https://doi.org/10.5220/0012437300003657