The Revised American Occupational Therapy Association Fieldwork Performance Evaluations: Evaluation of Internal Structure, Response Processes, and Precision-Part 2.

Abstract

Importance: There is an evidence-based need to assess the validity and reliability/precision of the revised American Occupational Therapy Association's Fieldwork Performance Evaluation (FWPE) items for the occupational therapy student (OTS) and the occupational therapy assistant student (OTAS).

Objective: To evaluate evidence of validity in relation to response processes, internal structure, and precision of the FWPEs.

Design: Cross-sectional study design.

Setting: OTS and OTAS fieldwork practice settings, United States.

Participants: Two hundred sixty-seven fieldwork educators participated in total, providing 228 OTS evaluations and 39 OTAS evaluations.

Outcomes and measures: A Rasch model was used to evaluate aspects of validity and precision.

Results: The rating scales provided evidence of the tools' overall validity. Thirty-two of 37 items on the FWPE for the OTS, and 27 of 31 items on the FWPE for the OTAS demonstrated acceptable fit, but the evidence of unidimensionality in the subscales and in the total scales was not fully supported. The total/reduced FWPE scales were able to separate students into at least four distinct groups of fieldwork performance. The relationships between the current and revised FWPEs indicate that the new scales measure different but related constructs of student fieldwork performance, compared with the current version.

Conclusions and relevance: The findings support that the revised FWPEs for the OTS and OTAS demonstrate preliminary evidence of internal structure, response processes, and precision, supporting evidence-based practice in fieldwork evaluations. What This Article Adds: This article highlights evidence demonstrating the validity and precision of the revised American Occupational Therapy Association's Fieldwork Performance Evaluation items and supports academic and fieldwork settings for occupational therapy students and occupational therapy assistant students.