Fig. 1

Different levels of focus depending on the evaluation purpose and outcomes in studies of research utilisation capacity-building interventions. The black dotted lines reflect the focus of enquiry. In (a), the focus is on immediate responses to the intervention, namely process effects and the mechanisms through which these are brought about. In (b), where the focus of the inquiry is on more distal outcomes using a higher level of analysis to investigate causality, mechanisms and process effects are functionally the same thing, i.e. proximal responses to the intervention