Commentary: Revitalizing research on health behavior theories

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Abstract
Noar and Zimmerman's article ‘Health behavior theory and cumulative knowledge regarding health behavior: are we moving in the right direction?’ (Noar and Zimmerman, 2005) provides an informative, but disturbing, analysis of research in this area. Despite thousands of studies that use or test specific theories of health behavior [see (Noar and Zimmerman, 2005), Figure 1], innovations and advances have been quite modest. The extent to which theories have become more accurate is uncertain. In fact, comparing initial statements of the dominant theories of health behavior with current descriptions of those same theories reveals remarkably few substantive changes.