com-b
com-b
Runs Michie, van Stralen, and West's COM-B model and the Behaviour Change Wheel to diagnose a specific behaviour: a behaviour happens only when Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation are all sufficient at once, so the missing component is the binding constraint and the intervention must target it. Find which of the three is the actual barrier rather than assuming motivation: people who fail to act are usually willing but lack the capability or the opportunity, and motivating someone who lacks the opportunity changes nothing.
The behaviour definition, the six sub-components, the nine intervention functions, and the deficit-to-function mapping live in references/com-b.md. Load that file before diagnosing and judge each component against it exactly.
When to use
The user has an adoption, compliance, habit, or behaviour-change problem and wants to know why the behaviour is not happening and what would change it. The unit of analysis is one specific behaviour by one specific actor or population, not a strategy or a culture in the abstract. Use ADKAR or Kotter when the question is how to run an organizational change programme; use Jobs-to-be-Done when the question is what outcome a customer is hiring a product for; use COM-B when the question is the mechanics of a single behaviour: capability, opportunity, motivation. If the user names several behaviours, diagnose the one they care about most or run each separately; do not blur them.
Language
Conduct the session and write the report in the language the user is writing in. The reference file is English; keep the framework keyed to it regardless of the output language.
Inputs
- BEHAVIOUR (required): the target behaviour to diagnose. Push for one specific action, who does what, when, where. If it is stated as a goal ("be healthier", "adopt the tool"), narrow it to a concrete behaviour with one or two questions first.
- ACTOR (required): the person or population expected to perform the behaviour. Different actors face different barriers; if the user names a broad group, segment it or pick the segment that matters.
- CONTEXT (optional): the setting, what has already been tried, and the decision the diagnosis should inform. This shapes the severity weighting and the intervention design, not the component assessments.