Objective To enhance partner notification (PN) practises in STI clinics a newly developed PN training based on motivational interviewing (MI) was offered to STI professionals and evaluated.

Methods The effectiveness of PN training on the professionals’ attitude, self-efficacy, and behaviour toward PN was examined with a within-subject and between-subject comparison. Just before and three months after delivery of the training, a questionnaire with 7-point Likert scales was completed by the intervention group (n = 54). To rule out that any effects could be caused by population trends or questionnaire completion, a non-randomly selected sample of controls (n = 37) also completed the questionnaires. Questionnaire items were examined separately and grouped into constructs of attitude, self-efficacy and behaviour.

Results In the within-subject (pre-post) comparison, positive changes were observed in 9/30 of the items, as well as in the overall constructs Self-efficacy, Skills: Implementation PN protocol, and Skills: coping with client resistance. In the control group no significant changes were observed. However, comparing the change scores between the intervention and control group, 5 items and the construct Self-efficacy were no longer significant.

Conclusions Despite that the PN training for STI professionals had no effect on attitudes or self-efficacy, significant improvements were observed in the most important outcome variables, namely those on skills. In studies were cluster randomised controlled studies are not feasible, selecting a convenient control sample seems to offer a more rigorous test of hypotheses than pre-post evaluations, presumably by controlling for population trends and mere measurement effects.