3.1 What research questions should the implementation evaluation be asking?
Key questions should be designed in order to assess implementation research or to report on implementation research. For example:
- What specific policy or intervention was put into place by the implementers in order to address the NCD issue being tackled?
- To what extent was the policy or intervention implemented as intended?
- To what extent was the policy or intervention adopted by implementers?
- What are the factors that can influence how well a policy or intervention is implemented?
- To what extent did these factors influence how well a policy or intervention is implemented?
- What is the association between the health outcomes (i.e. effectiveness) of a policy or intervention and how well this is implemented?
- Was the implementation approach that was used cost effective?
Peters et al.(78) have developed a useful table which can help develop the research questions for evaluations.