Dunja Dreesens

49 project group merged overlapping tool types and excluded tool types that are only developed by one organisation. In addition to excluding tools, the project group decided to split two tool types into two as the project group could not agree whether these tools were actually one or two tool types combined. The National Health Care Institute identified another five tool types to be added to the list. Some of these were excluded in the scoping review, but as these tool types were part of the institute’s monitoring responsibility they were added again (indicated with c in table 2 (and table 3)) (152). A few members of the project group considered that some of the tool types in the category ‘umbrella tools’ could be regarded as actual tools. Because we could not reach agreement on this, we decided to let the study participants decide. Finally, the project group added one emerging tool type (indicated with d in table 2), resulting in a list of 34 tool types. The definitions originating from the review were combined with those developed by the institute into an overview to compare the definitions of the tool types included by the survey. If the tool type definitions in the review differed from those developed by the Institute, were unavailable, or lacked any of the three required parts of a definition (a description of the tool, its goal and its target user(s)), such information was completed by the project group, preferably using glossaries and internationally available definitions (9). Survey and Delphi set-up The project group decided that assessing 34 tool types in a Delphi process by answering three questions per tool type would be too time consuming for the experts and might jeopardize their participation. Therefore, a survey was held ahead of the Delphi to decrease the number of tools to be assessed in the first Delphi round. The participants were only asked to indicate for each tool whether to keep or eliminate it; no criteria were provided by the project group. Definitions of the tools were not provided at this stage as we did not want to influence them during the in-/exclusion process. At the end of the survey, the participants were given the possibility to add tool types, preferably with a definition. Added tool types suggested by at least three participants were added to the list for the Delphi. Tools receiving a positive score (‘keep’) from more than 50% of the participants remained on the list. Chapter 3