MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4406109873 · doi:10.1016/j.ijheh.2025.114519

Behaviour change interventions to improve household sanitation and hygiene practices in urban settings: A systematic scoping review

2025· article· en· W4406109873 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Clara MacLeod, Katherine Davies, Mwamba Mwenge, Jenala Chipungu, Oliver Cumming, Robert Dreibelbis

Bibliographic record

VenueInternational Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldNursing
TopicChild Nutrition and Water Access
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersForeign, Commonwealth and Development Office
KeywordsSanitationHygienePsychological interventionEnvironmental healthOpen defecationBehaviour changeEnvironmental planningSystematic reviewMedicineBusinessMEDLINEGeographyNursingPolitical science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

INTRODUCTION: Behaviour change interventions have the potential to improve sanitation and hygiene practices in urban settings. However, evidence on which behaviour change interventions have successfully improved sanitation and hygiene practices in urban settings is unclear. METHODS: We performed electronic searches across five databases and one grey literature database to identify relevant studies published between January 1, 1990 and November 20, 2023 in English. Eligible study designs included randomised and non-randomised controlled trials with a concurrent control. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they reported a behaviour change intervention for improving sanitation and/or hygiene practices in an urban setting. Individual behaviour change intervention components were mapped to one of nine intervention functions of the capabilities, opportunities, motivations, and behaviour (COM-B) framework. Risk of bias was assessed for each study using an adapted Newcastle-Ottawa scale. RESULTS: After de-duplication, 8249 documents were screened by abstract and title, with 79 documents retrieved for full-text screening. We included 13 studies ranging from low- to high-quality. The behaviour change interventions had mixed effects on sanitation and hygiene practices in urban settings. Specifically, interventions improved latrine quality but not safe child faeces disposal. Interventions often improved handwashing with soap at key times and sometimes increased the presence of soap and water at the handwashing facility, used as a proxy measure for handwashing. There is limited evidence on food hygiene practices. Most behavioural outcomes were measured between 6 and 12 months after intervention implementation, which may undermine the sustainability of behaviour change interventions. CONCLUSION: Despite overall mixed behavioural effects on sanitation and hygiene practices, behaviour change interventions can improve certain behaviours in urban settings, such as latrine quality improvements and handwashing with soap at the household or compound level. More ambitious behaviour change interventions are needed to reduce disparities in sanitation and hygiene access in urban areas globally.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.025
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.081
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: Systematic review
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.025
Threshold uncertainty score0.131

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0250.081
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0090.008
Bibliometrics0.0200.018
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0040.004
Open science0.0020.002
Research integrity0.0030.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0050.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.046
GPT teacher head0.373
Teacher spread0.326 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSystematic review
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations11
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueInternational Journal of Hygiene and Environmental HealthSame topicChild Nutrition and Water AccessFrench-language works237,207