| General type | Goals | Definition | Number | Further issues |
| I. Empirical literature on development and testing of QIIs | Assess barriers to quality improvement | Reports on data collected to develop or test the QII | 2515–39 | What subtypes among the diverse investigations in this category will be most useful? |
| Discover effective quality improvement or provider behaviour change methods | Aims to improve quality of care for a defined population of individuals cared for/targeted by a specific organisational unit or units, practice, or community | How should the issue that full QII documentation is often spread across a large number of articles, some incorporating data and some not, be handled? | ||
| Implement guidelines or best practices | ||||
| II. QII stories, theories, and frameworks | Advance understanding or theory related to QII development or testing | No formal qualitative or quantitative data collection other than expert panel-related data | 304–9 40– 63 | How should articles in this category be distinguished from each other? Should the field develop quality standards for this kind of research, such as assessing the extent to which information is validated, systematic or original? |
| Develop consensus | Includes one or more case descriptions, illustrative stories, theories or frameworks | |||
| III. QII literature synthesis and meta-analysis | Develop the evidence base on methods for quality improvement or provider behaviour change | Reports literature synthesis or meta-analysis data | 1064–73 | Should standards for evaluating multicomponent interventions across studies be developed? |
| Assesses the effectiveness or characteristics of a QII | Are current quality standards for literature synthesis and meta-analysis adequate for behaviour-change interventions? | |||
| IV. Development and testing of QII-related tools | Discover effective technologies for use in quality improvement | Reports on data collected to develop or test a QII tool | 974–82 | Are standards for identifying naturalistic settings and conditions needed? |
| The method or tool is developed or tested in a naturalistic setting, under routine conditions | Are standards for assessing QII tool success needed? | |||
| Books | 411–13 83 | |||
| Unclassified | 284 85 |
See Appendix (online) for an annotated review list.