II-07 — Implementation Intelligence Vocabulary: A Shared Descriptive Vocabulary for Implementation Research
Year: 2026
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: This paper introduces the shared descriptive vocabulary of the Implementation Intelligence programme as a standalone, citable reference, independent of the programme's descriptive method. It explains why research on implementation is fragmented across disciplines that describe closely related phenomena in mutually incompatible, field-specific vocabularies with little citation contact between them, and argues that this fragmentation of language, rather than of findings, calls for a shared descriptive vocabulary rather than another explanatory framework. It explains why descriptive precision must precede correspondence and evaluation, distinguishing three ordered operations — observation, correspondence, and evaluation — and showing how the common practice of describing a condition as a "barrier" fuses observation and evaluation in a single act. It states the vocabulary's design principles, including that no term is defined by its relationship to an outcome, that existing terminology is adopted wherever it suffices, and that terms are graded rather than binarised. It presents the vocabulary's two-strand architecture (descriptive and design, related asymmetrically), summarises its four foundational concepts — Implementation Conditions, Implementation Architecture, Implementation Capability, and Implementation Knowledge — at reference depth, and states the descriptive, non-causal relationships among them. It distinguishes three registers in which the vocabulary's terms are held — practitioner, analytical, and formal — and situates the vocabulary against existing terminology in adjacent fields, both adopted constructs and resolved terminological collisions. The paper states the vocabulary's scope (descriptive, sector-independent, applicable independently of whether the implemented object was validated) and its limitations, including that it specifies no causal model of implementation and that its value as an instrument for cross-field comparison remains to be demonstrated in use rather than established by definition.
Author: Duffour, Suzanne
Language: English
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204873600