Measuring assessment standards in undergraduate medical programs: Development and validation of AIM tool

Abstract

Objective: To develop a tool to evaluate faculty perceptions of assessment quality in an undergraduate medical program.

Methods: The Assessment Implementation Measure (AIM) tool was developed by a mixed method approach. A preliminary questionnaire developed through literature review was submitted to a panel of 10 medical education experts for a three-round ‘Modified Delphi technique’. Panel agreement of > 75% was considered the criterion for inclusion of items in the questionnaire. Cognitive pre-testing of five faculty members was conducted. Pilot study was done with 30 randomly selected faculty members. Content validity index (CVI) was calculated for individual items (I-CVI) and composite scale (S-CVI).  Cronbach’s alpha was calculated to determine the internal consistency reliability of the tool.

Results: The final AIM tool had 30 items after the Delphi process. S-CVI was 0.98 with the S-CVI/Avg method and 0.86 by S-CVI/UA method, suggesting good content validity. Cut-off value of < 0.9 I-CVI was taken as criterion for item deletion.  Cognitive pre-testing revealed good item interpretation. Cronbach’s alpha calculated for the AIM was 0.9, whereas Cronbach’s alpha for the four domains ranged from 0.67 to 0.80.

Conclusions: ‘AIM’ is a relevant and useful instrument with good content validity and reliability of results, and may be used to evaluate the teachers´ perceptions about assessment quality.

doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.341.14354

How to cite this:Sajjad M, Khan RA, Yasmeen R. Measuring assessment standards in undergraduate medical programs: Development and validation of AIM tool. Pak J Med Sci. 2018;34(1):164-169.   doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.341.14354

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