Our analysis indicates that whilst this concept of outcome may be appropriate for measuring the short-term efficacy of pharmaceutical interventions, it is inappropriate for most complex interventions.
Even within pharmaceutical based research, this concept of 'outcomes' is insufficient for measuring the effectiveness of interventions in the real world, or for understanding and intervening in the implementation of clinical trial findings.
Within this context we can see that the concept of outcomes, as an 'endpoint', reflects the theoretical assumptions of the intervention being evaluated and the research question being addressed and that it has been applied using a patient-centred approach.
Our own research into patients' experiences of complex interventions leads us to believe that a critical analysis of the concept of outcomes will assist in identifying and better understanding the challenges that we all face, in whatever discipline, in measuring outcomes appropriately.
In this paper, the concept of outcome minimization through the use of penalty functions is combined with grey programming (GP) into an evolutionary simulation-optimization (ESO) procedure in order to solve solid waste management problems containing significant sources of uncertainty.
Of particular importance in this regard is the concept of outcome, which indicates the broader set of values and purpose that lend meaning to human action.
This finding is consistent with the concept of outcome expectancies proposed in social cognitive theory [ 23] and used in the development of the intervention.
The outcomes theory background to VMEP outlines the concept of outcome hierarchies: "a cascading set of causes in the real world" (Duignan 2012a, p. 1).
Uncovering and critically analysing these assumptions enables us to free the concept of outcome, in the more general sense of 'consequence of', from the particular concept of 'outcomes' as used in efficacy or effectiveness research, dominated as it is by the RCT research paradigm.
As mentioned by Uchida, an outcome research to evaluate the quality of home care services and caring method that will extend the concept of outcome to system establishment and a short period of economic evaluation, as well as the development of a care management method for planning the promotion of independence and preventive measures among healthy populations [ 19].
This concept of investment in a shared outcome also reduces the emotional load on both the giver and receiver of feedback.
