This supplement is focused on the methods, results and recommendations from the research project “Methods of Assessing Response to Quality Improvement Strategies” (MARQuIS). MARQuIS was funded by the Scientific Support to Policies component of the European Union Sixth Framework Research Programme (Contract SP21-CT-2004-513712), and it lasted from January 2004 to June 2008.

MARQuIS was coordinated by R Suñol, assisted by P Vallejo, from the Avedis Donabedian University Institute (Autonomous University of Barcelona) in Spain. Some of the European leading organisations in the healthcare quality field participated in this study, with two different roles:

• Eight organisations (partners) were involved in research and dissemination activities: the European Hospital and Healthcare Federation (Belgium), the European Society for Quality in Healthcare (Ireland), the Centre for Research and Advanced Training (Italy), the Department of Social Medicine, Academic Medical Centre/University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the Dutch Institute for Healthcare Improvement (The Netherlands), the Manchester Centre for Public Policy and Management (UK), the National Centre for Quality Assessment in Health Care (Poland) and the Avedis Donabedian University Institute (Spain).

• A country coordinator was involved in the coordination and development of the MARQuIS field test in each of the eight involved countries (except for Belgium, which had two coordinators): École de Santé Publique, Université Libre de Bruxelles and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Spojena akreditacni komise Ceske Republiky (Czech Republic), Agence Nationale d’Accréditation et d’Evaluation en Santé (France), National Centre for Quality Assessment in Health Care (Poland), Fundación para la Acreditación y el Desarrollo Asistencial (Spain), Nederland’s Instituut voor Accreditatie …