Defining Implementation - A process or an outcome?

The term implementation is widely used, not only in stress interventions, but also in related fields. Particular with the emergence of implementation science, the popularity of the term increased. However, in stress preventive interventions, the term implementation is continuously used without a clear definition and there appears to be several distinct meanings in the literature. Whereas the discussion of concepts and theory is indeed at the heart of science the term implementation is used instrumentally seemingly without reflection. The aim of this paper is to investigate the use of the term implementation in preventive workplace interventions studies and how it is being defined, and if that is not the case what interpretation the paper applies to implementation. Further, this paper proposes a definition of implementation in preventive interventions. The systematic study collated, summarized and reviewed 6755 preventive worksite intervention studies that used the term implementation, in order to investigate the different meanings of the term and propose a definition. The literature review shows that only three papers (11%) have a clear definition of implementation where the rest does not provide a clear definition. Based on the findings so far, defining Implementation is a question of being either a process and/or an outcome.