Perceived academic quality and approaches to studying at Danish schools of occupational therapy

Students in the fourth semester of basic training programmes in occupational therapy at seven different institutions of higher education in Denmark were surveyed using the Course Experience Questionnaire [CEQ] and the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory [RASI]. The CEQ proved to be a reasonably robust in this setting: most of the scales demonstrated satisfactory reliability, and a factor analysis confirmed its intended constituent structure. The CEQ also discriminated among students at the seven institutions in their patterns of scores. The RASI proved to be less satisfactory: many subscales did not demonstrate satisfactory reliability and its intended constituent structure was only partly confirmed by factor analysis. Moreover, the RASI failed to discriminate clearly among students at the seven institutions. The scores on the CEQ produced by students at four of the institutions raised concerns relating to the clarity of academic goals and standards, the teaching performance of staff, and the academic workload imposed on students. Nevertheless, students at five institutions produced relatively high ratings of their general satisfaction with their programmes, and students at all seven schools produced high ratings of the appropriateness of their assessments and the acquisition of generic skills.