Delta Studies: Expanding the Concept of Deviance Studies to Design More Effective Improvement Interventions.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The effects of improvement (implementation and de-implementation) interventions are often modest. Although positive and negative deviance studies have been extensively used in improvement science and quality improvement efforts, conceptual and methodological innovations are needed to improve our ability to use information about variation in quality to design more effective interventions.

Objective

We describe a novel mixed methods extension of the deviance study we term "delta studies." Delta studies seek to quantitatively identify sites that have recently changed from low performers to high performers, or vice versa, in order to qualitatively learn about active strategies that produced recent change, challenges change agents faced and how they overcame them, and

SUBMITTER: Harris AHS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7878588 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature