TABLE 3.

Implementation Research Objectives With Examples for Food Fortification Programs^a

Research Objective	Description	Examples
To describe	Describes the context in which food fortification is occurring and the main components that may affect the success of food fortification	What proportion of the population consumes wheat flour that is produced in industrial mills?
To explore	Explores the possible barriers and facilitators to the implementation of food fortification	What are the barriers and facilitators for implementing adequate external quality assurance/quality control?
To explain	Explains how and why certain aspects of the intervention or the context may influence implementation outcomes	How do market prices affect revenue margins for wheat flour millers?
To influence	Tests desired effects of an implementation improvement strategy	Does additional training and fortification sensitization of millers lead to better fortification of a product?
To predict	Predicts whether the same (or modified version of) aspects of a food fortification program will work under various conditions (useful for scale-up)	Will the radio advocacy materials that increased fortification logo awareness in the southern parts of the country also produce similar results in the northern parts of the country?

↵a Adapted from Peters DH, Tran NT, Taghreed A. Implementation Research in Health: A Practical Guide. World Health Organization; 2013.