1There are many glossaries and indexes in the field of research and evaluation. The following is not intended to suggest new ones but simply to present definitions of the main concepts used in this book.

2Components

The constituents of a system. These can be contextual (prior to and independent of the intervention) or interventional (manipulated by the actors to meet the interventional objective).

3Health interventions

Activities performed for, with, or on behalf of a population, whose purpose is to assess, improve, maintain, promote, or modify health and/or its determinants.

4Intervention categories

Areas of intervention defined by their nature (e.g. communication, education, coercion, regulation, incentivisation, etc.) or implementation environment (e.g. school interventions).

5Intervention levels

Policies or strategies (programme), interventions, activities.

6Intervention system

Set of interdependent human and material contextual agents, present in a given space-time, generating effect mechanisms. The intervention becomes a location-specific arrangement of pre-existing contextual parameters that influence their own evolution over time.

7Intervention theory

Assumptions upon which people, consciously or unconsciously, build their interventions.

8Mechanisms

Reactions of a human agent in a given context.

9Methods

Processes used for statistical, qualitative, or mixed analysis.

10Methodology

The study of methods.

11Process

Dynamics of implementing an intervention, actors, and actions.

12Routinisable

Capacity to be implemented under real practice conditions, within existing constraints, and with the resources that the actors have within a given practice environment.

13Strategies

Programme of interventions composed of multiple activities.

14Sustainability level

State or degree of perpetuation (like a photo).

15Sustainability process

Processes to foster sustainability (like a film).

16Tools

Products or objects used for data collection: questionnaires, interview or observation guides, Delphi questionnaire, etc.