Meta Evaluation of PhD Course in Medical Education

Introduction: Educational programs need to be evaluated in order to achieve educational goals, improve quality and maintain dynamics. Regardless of the type of evaluation, in every evaluation there is a possibility of bias in the evaluator's decisions. Therefore, meta-evaluation is necessary. The purpose of this research is to Meta-evaluate the PhD program in the field of medical education in Iran University of Medical Sciences, using the Staffel Beam meta-evaluation scale. Research method: This study is a cross-sectional research using Staffel Beam's meta-evaluation checklist, which includes four standards. The utility standard had 7 indicators, feasibility, 3 indicators, propriety 8 indicators, accuracy had 12 indicators, and each of which was checked separately. Results: The results indicated that the highest overall score was related to the accuracy and the lowest was assigned to the practicality and ethical issues. The highest amount of evaluation power was related to the feasibility standard and the lowest was related to the propriety standard. In the final review of four meta-evaluation indicators, it is clear that the status of the feasibility standard is very good and the moral standard indicator is average. The standards of usefulness and accuracy are also in good condition. Conclusion: Taking into account of the scores, it seems that the focus should be on training the evaluators and the topic of evaluation to improve the current circumstance. Moreover, maintaining the standards with high score is important. However, more attention should be paid to ethical issues in evaluation, such as making agreements between the evaluator and the evaluation client.