Exercise 3: Adapting PICO Outside Clinical Medicine — Possible Solution
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Answers will vary by the topic chosen. A worked example, using a
non-medical topic - "Does remote work affect employee productivity?":

In clinical medicine, the Intervention is usually a treatment being
directly tested (a drug, a procedure), and the Comparison is a
placebo, an alternative treatment, or standard care. Outside medicine,
there's often no single "treatment" being administered - instead, the
Intervention becomes a real-world condition, arrangement, or practice
being examined, and the Comparison becomes whatever alternative
arrangement it's being measured against.

For the remote work example:

P: full-time employees in office-based roles (as opposed to roles that
are inherently field-based or manual)

I: working remotely at least 3 days per week (the "condition" being
examined, standing in for a clinical "treatment")

C: working in-office 5 days per week (the alternative arrangement,
standing in for a clinical "standard care" comparison)

O: a specific, measurable productivity indicator - for example, the
number of completed project milestones per quarter, rather than a
subjective, unmeasurable sense of "productivity"

The general adaptation principle: wherever PICO was built around
"what treatment is given," a non-medical question can substitute "what
real-world condition, policy, or practice is present" - the underlying
logic of naming a specific factor and a specific alternative to compare
it against still applies, even without a literal medical intervention.

ANSWER: Outside medicine, the Intervention becomes the real-world
condition, arrangement, or practice being studied (e.g. working
remotely a certain number of days), and the Comparison becomes the
alternative arrangement being measured against (e.g. working
in-office) - substituting for medicine's "treatment vs. standard care"
structure with an equivalent real-world contrast.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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This explains the adaptation principle generally, then demonstrates it
concretely with a specific non-medical example, directly matching what
the exercise asked for.