What factors influence how belief impacts health interventions? A multidisciplinary scoping review

An individual's belief may influence psycho-neurobiological processes and modulate therapeutic or performance outcomes. However, research in this area has been limited by reductive and discipline-specific approaches. To address this, the current paper aims to identify the determinants that shape health-intervention beliefs and propose a common framework. A scoping review was conducted following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, using the population-concept-context framework across the CINAHL, Embase, PsycInfo, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases (12,232 records identified). Twenty-six publications were included in the final review, with most (65%) published in the past decade. Studies spanned multiple treatment domains and designs, including review articles (n = 15), correlational studies (n = 4), experimental studies (n = 3), systematic reviews (n = 2), a qualitative focus group (n = 1), and a modified Delphi study (n = 1). Qualitative content analysis revealed five primary categories of influence: individual characteristics, practitioner characteristics, individual-practitioner relationship characteristics, intervention characteristics, and setting characteristics. Narrative synthesis demonstrated that current belief constructs share common pathways of influence, culminating in a unified conceptual model termed the 'belief effect'. This model offers an integrative, hypothesis-generating framework to support practitioners in shaping an individual's belief and to guide future research investigating belief-related influences on therapeutic and performance outcomes.