Implementation of OSCE test to develop appropriate tool to measure mothers' parenting skills

Parents play a vital role throughout a child's life. This role is very significant in the beginning years of a child's life. In this period, the child encounters new experiences and these experiences make him or her to learn and grow. These days, in order to help the parents build a bright future for their children, different parenting programs have been designed. These programs provide a great opportunity for parents to enhance positive parenting skills. The aim of this study was to design a reliable and valid instrument for assessing the mothers' parenting skills.

44 mothers who had children aged 3 - 8 were invited to participate in this study. They took part in parenting-skills training sessions for more than two months. Then they were asked to attend the test center after six months to be tested on trained skills. In this study, mothers' parenting skills were measured by the OSCE test. The reliability of the test was determined with three methods including split half, Cronbach alpha, and correlation between assessors' scores in two similar stations. The construct validity of the test was determined with Explanatory Factor Analysis.

The total Cronbach alpha coefficient obtained was 0.83 which indicated that the test had a high internal reliability. The Spearman correlation coefficient obtained for two halves of the test was 0.76. The results of Explanatory Factor Analysis showed that nine stations of OSCE were focused on two factors. The first factor was named positive positions and the second factor was named negative positions.

The designed OSCE test has the suitable psychometric features to be used by researchers to assess mothers' parenting skills.