A new perspective in evaluating clinical effectiveness: the UWO Clinical Grading System

To improve assessment of the performance of speech-language pathology students in clinical practicum, faculty and students in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Western Ontario developed a new evaluation instrument, the UWO Clinical Grading System (UWO-CGS). This article reports on the development and field-testing of the UWO-CGS and includes estimates of the instrument's intrasupervisor and intersupervisor reliability. Results of content-related, construct-related, and criterion-related investigations are reported to support the inference that the UWO-CGS is a valid measure of the clinical effectiveness of student speech-language pathologists.