The Development of a Questionnaire to Assess Research and Evaluation Capacity-Building

This article describes the development of a questionnaire to assess research and evaluation capacity-building support. This support was provided to public health professionals via a capacity-building partnership, the Western Australian Sexual Health and Blood-borne Virus Applied Research and Evaluation Network (SiREN). Evaluating research and evaluation capacity-building initiatives can be challenging due to their complexity. The development of the questionnaire was informed by systems concepts that acknowledged the complex nature of capacity-building, a literature review and consultation and pilot testing with stakeholders. The final questionnaire contains 17 quantitative and seven qualitative questions. Pilot testing found that the questionnaire was easy to understand and acceptable and enabled service users to provide an accurate description of changes that occurred as a result of receiving support. The development of the questionnaire provides insight into how measurement tools to assess capacity-building initiatives can reflect complexity, including the influence of contextual factors, unintended consequences and the non-linear nature of the capacity-building process. The questionnaire could be adapted to evaluate similar capacity-building efforts and the findings used to strengthen capacity-building efforts.