Not all health research questions are clinical questions. The following alternate question formulations may be better suited to the research you are doing:
PICOST (Like PICO but with additional areas to consider): Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Situation, Type of Study
PICOT: Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Time Frame
PEO: Population and/or Problem, Exposures, Outcome
PCC: Population, Concept, and Context [often used in Scoping Reviews]
PESTEL: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal Factors
SPICE: Setting, Population or Perspective, Intervention, Comparison, Evaluation
ECLIPS [management & service related issues]: Expectations, Client Group, Location, Impact, Professionals Involved, Service
MIP [medical ethics review]: Methodology, Issues, Participants
SPIDER: Sample, Phenomenon of interest, Design, Evaluation, Research type
For full details, please see
Booth, A. et al. (2019) Formulating questions to explore complex interventions within qualitative evidence synthesis. BMJ Global Health v.4:e001107. Available at: https://gh.bmj.com/content/4/Suppl_1/e001107
