Association Between Chiropractic Students’ Hand-Eye Coordination or General Self-efficacy and Their Performance on a Spinal Manipulative Therapy Examination: A Cross-sectional Study

Objective

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between either hand-eye coordination (HEC) or general self-efficacy (GSE) and spinal-manipulative-therapy (SMT) exam scores. We also measured the interrater reliability of the SMT marking criteria used in our study.

Methods

Third-year chiropractic students were recruited from the chiropractic spinal technique course at Murdoch University. They completed an alternate-hand wall-toss test to assess HEC and a questionnaire to evaluate GSE. Linear regression models were used to assess the relationships between HEC and GSE on manual-therapy exam scores. Two assessors scored the examination, allowing the investigation of interrater reliability for the SMT marking criteria.

Results

A total of 33 male and 31 female students, aged 20 to 44 years, completed both the GSE questionnaire and the SMT examination, but only 28 women also completed the HEC test. Male participants had higher scores on both HEC (9.4 additional catches, P < 0.001) and SMT (6.7%, P = .01) compared to female participants. There was no statistically significant relationship between HEC and SMT (P = .932). However, there was a linear relationship between GSE and SMT when adjusted for sex (P = .032). Furthermore, the intraclass correlation coefficient for the marking criteria was moderate to good, at 0.77 (95% confidence interval, 0.63-0.86).

Conclusion

These preliminary results suggest that when adjusted for sex, a student's GSE may be related to their SMT exam scores. The alternate-hand wall-toss test was not correlated with SMT scores, but other HEC metrics may have a relationship.