Changes in research competency of public health personnel following an empowerment-based capacity development program in Thailand: a convergent parallel mixed-methods study.

Introduction: Research competency among frontline public health personnel is a prerequisite for evidence-informed local health systems, yet most capacity-building programs in low- and middle-income settings are short didactic courses that are rarely evaluated with both outcome and process data. This study examined changes in self-reported research competency among public health personnel who completed an Empowerment-Based Capacity Development Program designed to convert routine public health work into publishable research, and explored how participants themselves accounted for those changes. The quantitative outcome sits at Kirkpatrick level 2 (self-reported learning) and the qualitative strand adds level 1 (reaction); neither strand reaches level 3 (behavior) or level 4 (results). The evaluation is presented as preliminary implementation and feasibility evidence rather than as an effectiveness trial. Methods: A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was used. The quantitative strand was a single-group pretest-posttest study without a comparison group, conducted with 30 purposively sampled public health personnel from three self-selected service settings in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Surat Thani, and Khon Kaen provinces, Thailand. Participants completed a five-session, six-component empowerment program (policy, preparation, practice, publishing, positive reinforcement, and passion) delivered over one academic year. Self-reported research competency was measured with an adapted 47-item research competency questionnaire; the factor structure of the original instrument was reported previously, whereas evidence generated for the present study was limited to content validity of the adapted items (item-objective congruence 0.67-1.00) and internal consistency in a separate pilot of 30 personnel (Cronbach's α = 0.84). Data were analyzed with paired Results: Self-reported overall research competency was higher at posttest than at pretest, rising from 3.13 (SD = 0.27) to 4.27 (SD = 0.35) out of 5 (within-participant mean difference 1.14, 95% CI 0.98-1.30; Discussion: Participation in an empowerment-based, practice-embedded program was associated with large within-participant increases in self-reported research competency, and participants' retrospective accounts described the change as a shift from research as an expert activity to research as an extension of routine work that nonetheless stops short of independent dissemination. Because the design was single-group and both strands relied on self-report collected by the team that delivered the program, these findings constitute feasibility and acceptability evidence rather than evidence of causal effectiveness. Controlled designs with longer follow-up and objective research-productivity indicators are required before wider scale-up, and competency instruments in this field require items covering collaboration and the integration of research into routine work.