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Inter-rater Agreement on Final Competency Testing Utilizing Standardized Patients
Dixie H Bowman1, Kyle L Ferber, Adam P Sima
1Department of Physical Therapy, PO Box 980224, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA. Tel 804-828-4766, fax 804-828-8111. dhbowman@vcu.edu.
Unlabelled:
The purpose of this study was to determine whether licensed physical therapists (n=8) serving as standardized patients (SPs) for practical examinations evaluate physical therapy students (n=51) equivalently to the physical therapy course instructor (n=1).
Methods:
The SPs completed the same assessment based on the evaluation criteria as did the instructor. The scores for the practical examination, answers to three questions, and the documentation note were summarized separately for the SP and the instructor by means and standard deviations. A paired t-test and an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for each aspect of the score were calculated. ICC(1,1) values were reported along with corresponding 95% confidence intervals.
Results:
The instructor had significantly higher scores for the practical exam and the overall score compared to the ratings from the SPs. No differences were observed between the instructor and SP scores on the three answers to the questions and documentation note scores.
Conclusions:
Based on the ICC values identified in this study, a physical therapist serving as an SP may not be an adequate replacement for an instructor when it comes to grading physical therapy students on all aspects of their competency tests.
