Adaptive Interventions to Promote Change in the 21st Century: The Responsive Feedback Approach

The responsive feedback (RF) approach is part of a family of intervention designs that aim to collect timely data to serve as feedback to planners and implementers and make appropriate changes to the interventions to enhance their success while the intervention is still in progress. The RF approach is similar to but also builds on other approaches (e.g., adaptive management and feedback loops/mechanisms) to offer an integrated, systematic, and systemic method to improve outcomes. In sum, the RF approach is a culmination of a movement of experimentation aimed at improving social change programs building on the strengths of different intervention practices. Several initiatives are already using elements of the RF approach with varying degrees of success. 

This supplement aims to describe:

• The RF approach and discuss similarities and differences with other approaches, such as continuous quality improvement
• Major challenges in designing and implementing an RF effort
• Theoretical, interventional, and methodological considerations in adopting and adapting RF
• Challenges in introducing and establishing “test and learn” cultures within organizations
• Exemplar cases using an RF approach in different variations

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