Psychological interventions for addictive behaviours (i.e., alcohol, smoking, gambling) typically focus on reducing the frequency of that target behaviour. Individuals generally set a “count goal” and then monitor the frequency of these behaviours via a process of counting/recording (i.e., number of alcoholic drinks, number of dollars gambled). We argue that this approach, although a key feature of interventions, presents a range of challenges, including: confusion regarding what constitutes a count; remembering to keep count; and remembering to stop at a certain count. We argue that these inherent features of “count goals” may serve to undermine treatment effectiveness for addictive behaviours and potentially other behaviour change interventions. Furthermore, given counting of specific behaviours occurs frequently within digital interventions (e.g., steps, cigarettes, drinks), these issues may be further exacerbated within mHealth (interventions delivered through mobile digital devices). In this article, we offer an alternative to setting “count goals” as part of a behavioural intervention. This approach directly limits a problem behaviour by constraining the time period, and rate of that behaviour, with no requirement to count or record the frequency of the behaviour—we refer to this as the “Chronos Approach.” We suggest that this approach lends itself particularly well to mHealth interventions, whereby daily reminders and timed alerts can be easily programmed into a smartphone. We discuss the advantages of this method and illustrate how it can be effectively incorporated into mHealth behaviour interventions, providing a specific example of an alcohol reduction smartphone app wherein the Chronos Approach has been implemented.

中文翻译：

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成瘾行为干预的另一种目标设定技术：Chronos 方法

针对成瘾行为（即酒精、吸烟、赌博）的心理干预通常侧重于减少目标行为的频率。个人通常设定一个“计数目标”，然后通过计数/记录过程监控这些行为的频率（即酒精饮料的数量、赌博的美元数量）。我们认为，这种方法虽然是干预措施的一个关键特征，但也带来了一系列挑战，包括：对什么构成计数的混淆；记得记数；并记住在某个计数处停止。我们认为，“计数目标”的这些固有特征可能会破坏对成瘾行为和其他潜在行为改变干预措施的治疗效果。此外，给定的特定行为计数经常发生在数字干预中（例如。例如，步数、香烟、饮料），这些问题在移动医疗（通过移动数字设备提供的干预措施）中可能会进一步恶化。在本文中，我们提供了一种替代方法，可以将“计数目标”设置为行为干预的一部分。这种方法通过限制时间段和行为的速率直接限制问题行为，不需要计算或记录行为的频率——我们将其称为“Chronos 方法”。我们建议这种方法特别适合移动医疗干预，从而可以轻松地将每日提醒和定时警报编程到智能手机中。我们讨论了这种方法的优点，并说明了如何将其有效地纳入 mHealth 行为干预中，