The CBS methodology seeks to apply behavioural science to public policy challenges in five stages: Review, Investigate, Design, Experiment and Recommend (RIDER) (see Figure Above).

• Review stage involves identifying the problem that requires behavioural intervention.
• Investigative stage is a fact finding stage, which involves discovering behavioural constraints and their causes;
• Design stage identifies the feasible and impactful behavioural interventions and develops a behaviour interventions plan, based on insights from the investigation stage;
• Experiment stage puts the intervention in a setting that allows the impacts of each intervention to be measured; and
• Recommend stage identifies      actions to be taken, based on the results observed from the experiment.

The CBS methodology differs from other types of research methodologies in that the methodology is demand driven. In this regard, the CBS works in collaboration with its stakeholders (currently government departments and institutions) at each stage of methodology, with a view to ensuring that at the review stage, only problems that matter to stakeholders are the ones that the envisaged research addresses. The Investigate stage generates the technical aspect of the problem, whereas Design stages addresses the how the problem should be examined to generate a solution to the problem.  The recommend stage spells out actions to take for solutions to these problems. The collaboration with stakeholders ensures joint ownership of the outcome, which facilitates easy and quick uptake of the findings of the studies for policy actions. The RIDER stages are summarized in the figure Above.