Study of the Reliability and Validity of Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in the Assessment of Clinical Skills of Audiology Students

Abstract

Introduction:Audiology students should possess clinical competence and skills. To achieve this, their clinical skills must be properly assessed. The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a standard and fair examination of clinical competence. The goal of this study is to devise a checklist of OSCE examination criteria and study their validity and reliability for assessing the clinical competence of Audiology students.Methods:Among the various procedures in which audiology students should possess demonstrated competence, 10 specific skills were selected and checklists were prepared. Faculty members of university’s Audiology Department were consulted to determine the validity of the checklists. Subsequently, the examination was administered to all 14 fourth-year audiology students in their final semester of study at Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences. The examination consisted of three question stations and seven procedure stations. Each station was managed by two examiners who independently used a checklist to score each student’s performance in a given procedure. To determine reliability, the Spearman test was used.Results:The correlation between each examiner’s scores of students at question stations was 0.908. The correlation between each examiner’s scores at procedure stations was 0.857 (p=0). The site of lesion test had the highest correlation (0.948) and immittance audiometry had the lowest correlation (0.585).Conclusion:The prepared checklists had good validity and reliability and can be used to evaluate the clinical competence of audiology students in their final semester of study.

The Scientific Rigor of the Objective Structured Examination for Competency Assessment in Health Sciences Education: A Systematic Review

“…Another 5 studies evaluated the OSCE among undergraduate students in programs of occupational and physical therapy education. [28][29][30][31][32] Overall, our analysis included data from 5 graduate (427 students and 22 faculty members) 15,19,24,33,34 and 8 undergraduate (1,443 students, 15 faculty members, and 3 recent graduates) 25,[28][29][30][31][32]36,37 programs. e following areas of practice were assessed by the OSCE in included studies: cardiorespiratory 15,25,36 ; neurologic 15,24,28,29 ; musculoskeletal 15,19,28,29,33,34,36 ; exercise prescription 36 ; and professional practice.…”

“…e following areas of practice were assessed by the OSCE in included studies: cardiorespiratory 15,25,36 ; neurologic 15,24,28,29 ; musculoskeletal 15,19,28,29,33,34,36 ; exercise prescription 36 ; and professional practice. 36,37 In 4 studies, general skills across different practice areas were evaluated. [30][31][32]37 e OSCE was principally used as a summative assessment, 15,19,24,25,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]37 with formative feedback on performance provided to students during the OSCE in 5 studies.…”

“…36,37 In 4 studies, general skills across different practice areas were evaluated. [30][31][32]37 e OSCE was principally used as a summative assessment, 15,19,24,25,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]37 with formative feedback on performance provided to students during the OSCE in 5 studies. [28][29][30][31][32] e structure of the OSCE, described in Supplemental Digital Content 1 (Table 1, http://links.lww.com/JOPTE/A206), varied in the number of practice areas included, domains of practice assessed, the number of competencies sampled, and the type, number, and duration of stations.…”

“…Including more than one area of practice in an OSCE increased the number of domains of practice assessed (Spearman's rho, 0.51; P = .15) and the number of competencies sampled (Spearman's rho, 0.79; P < .001). e number of stations included in the OSCE was reported in only 7 studies 15,19,24,25,28,36,37 and thus could not be evaluated. e time per station was identified in 11 studies.…”

Implementation of OSCE Test to Develop Appropriate Tool to Measure Mothers’ Parenting Skills

“…Nikbakht et-al attempted to determine the reliability using the Spearman’s test in their study. In that study, each station was independently administered by two raters who each had a list of checklists of participants to score their performance (Nickbakht, Amiri, & Latifi, 2013). Rozena and Graham used Cronbach’s alpha to determine reliability in their study.…”