Supporting Facilities to Enhance the Effective Outcome of 18 Excellent Research Centers, Khon Kaen University

Abstract

Background and Objective: Khon Kaen University founded 21 research centers, since 2002 to which can be divided according to2006 into 3 groups: Science and Technology, Health Science, and Humanities and Social Sciences. Each center is excellent in its specialty and the every year, it is evaluated by the university based on the same criteria. This study is aimed to evaluate supporting facilities to enhance that effective outcome of each research center and the appropriate indicators for evaluating these criteria 3 research groups.

Methods: This study was a cross sectional research of the Institutional research Project, Khon Kaen University, and fiscal year 2007. The research instruments were questionnaire and interview based on the conceptual framework of quality criteria of official administration. The interview was divided into 2 parts. Part 1: personal data; and part 2: The procedures management of research centers. Content validity was checked by the experts. Content analysis was used to analyze the data of questionnaire and interview, and the indicator was reported as percentage.

Results: The important supporting facilities in enhancing research activity of the 3 research groups can be divided into 7 aspects which were personnel, leadership, financial, service, research network, being excellent center, and administration. The appropriate indicator and criteria to evaluate the efficiency of research centers in Health Science and Science and Technology groups were similar in terms of new indicators in 2009. Oral presentation in academic conference, Intellectual property, Amount of external fund, Arrangement of academic/ academic service conference, and Number of graduates in Master’s degree which were considered as 60% or more, For the research centers of Humanities and Social Sciences group, the appropriate indicator and criteria were Publication of research study in journals with sub-headings which were articles in journals with information based on Thailand Research Fund (TRF)/ Higher Education Commission (HEC) and articles in journals with information based on TCI which was considered as 100%.

Conclusion: The information from this study may be benefit for in addition to enhance the effectiveness and for the development of each research center, the common indicators which appropriate with the university to select or establish a new research center or present research centers enhance the context of each research center are needed.