Performance Evaluation of Occupational Therapy Students: A Validity Study

Abstract

French

Objective evaluation of clinical competence is always a difficult task. Many attempts have been made to design an instrument for such evaluation. and Performance Evaluation of Occupational Therapy Students (PEOTS) is such an instrument. It was designed as a criterion-referenced evaluation of performance in four broad areas of clinical competence: professional interaction, assessment, programming and treatment. This instrument has enjoyed fairly broad acceptance based on its face validity alone. The purpose of this study was to collect preliminary data on the content and construct validity of the instrument. A sample of 43 new graduates from Canadian occupational therapy programs were evaluated on the job within the first year of their practice using PEOTS. The data were collected over a two year period and came from facilities across the country. Analysis of the results showed that the instrument had overall good content and construct validity. However, some low frequency items need to be investigated further and some items need to have their criterion levels changed.

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