Development of a Strategic Management Assessment Tool for District Health Offices in Songkhla Province

Abstract

This research aimed to develop and preliminarily validate an assessment instrument for strategic management in District Public Health Offices in Songkhla Province. The study employed a research and development (R&D) approach integrated with an exploratory sequential mixed methods design and was conducted in three phases: (1) identifying the components and synthesizing the conceptual framework through a review of relevant documents, concepts, and theories, together with in-depth interviews with 16 personnel from District Public Health Offices; (2) developing and preliminarily validating the assessment instrument by examining its content validity and administering it to 192 personnel from District Public Health Offices to assess internal consistency and preliminary construct validity using exploratory factor analysis; and (3) assessing the level of strategic management based on personnel's perceptions.

The findings revealed that the strategic management framework consisted of four components: environmental analysis, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy evaluation and control. The assessment instrument comprised 36 items, with item-level content validity index (IOC) values ranging from 0.67 to 1.00 and a mean IOC of 0.94. The overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.957, with coefficients for the four components ranging from 0.858 to 0.895. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that the data were suitable for factor analysis (KMO = 0.951; Bartlett's test, p < 0.001) and supported a four-factor structure, accounting for 45.44% of the total variance. Thirty-four items had factor loadings ranging from 0.430 to 0.943, while Items 13 and 33 had factor loadings below 0.40 but were retained because of their theoretical importance and should be further examined in future studies. The overall perceived level of strategic management was high (x̄ = 3.74, S.D. = 0.53), with environmental analysis having the highest mean score (x̄ = 3.83, S.D. = 0.58) and strategy evaluation and control having the lowest (x̄ = 3.71, S.D. = 0.59). The findings provide preliminary evidence that the assessment instrument demonstrates content validity, internal consistency, and an appropriate factor structure for assessing strategic management in District Public Health Offices. However, further validation using an independent sample and confirmatory factor analysis is recommended.