Behaviour change is key to increasing the uptake of evidence into healthcare practice and improving health outcomes. There is a wide variety of psychological theories used to explain health care professional behaviours and cognitions. When trying to study the implementation of a behaviour change it is difficult to know which of the large number of theories to apply to which behaviour and setting. The Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) was developed to achieve a better understanding of implementation problems and the underlying processes involved in successful behaviour change. TDF aims to make the psychological theories more accessible for implementation researchers.

The new thematic series on ‘Theoretical Domains Framework for behaviour change research’ is published in Implementation Science. The aim of this thematic series is to document the impact of this theoretical framework on implementation research and to consider its strengths, limitations and potential for further use and development.

In addition to the introductory editorial, the initial articles published in this series include  a validation study of TDF, by James Cane, Denise O’Connor and Susan Michie, which proposes a refined version of the framework for future use in identifying implementation problems with even greater explanatory and predictive power.