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. 2025 Mar 26;18(1):128.
doi: 10.1186/s13104-025-07183-6.

Situational judgment test in pharmacy education: assessing professionalism capability among students

Narges Fatehi-Firouzabadi  1 , Fatemeh Keshmiri  2
Affiliations

Situational judgment test in pharmacy education: assessing professionalism capability among students

Narges Fatehi-Firouzabadi et al. BMC Res Notes. .

Abstract

Objective: Situational Judgment tests are recognized as a valid predictor of job performance. In the present study, the students' professionalism capabilities were investigated using the situational judgment test. This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2023-2024. The situational judgment test includes four scenarios in the faculty situation (classroom) and six scenarios in the workplace situation in the field (hospital and urban pharmacy) with the format of "selected-response format" examined. 160 pharmacy students in different academic years participated. The cut-off scorer of situational judgment test was determined using the Cohen method and the norm-reference method of standard-setting.

Results: The results showed that the scores of students in the situational judgment test were reported as 14.13 ± 6.07. According to Cohen's method, the score of 60 pharmacy students (50%) is lower than the cut-off score. The cut-off score based on the norm-reference method of standard-setting showed that 33 students (20.6%) scored below the cut-off score. The results showed that the students who participated in the professionalism course scored an average of 2.62 higher than the students who did not participate in these training courses. (p-value = 0.015). The development of professional education as a longitudinal program in the pharmacy curriculum is suggested.

Keywords: Ethics; Pharmacy; Professionalism; Situational judgment test.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was reviewed by the ethics committee of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences and approved. (ID: IR.SSU.REC.1402.085). The informed written consent forms were obtained from all participants. The work was conducted following the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants were provided with information on the study and gave consent. Consent for publication: ‘Not applicable’. Competing interests: There is no conflict of interest in this research to be declared.

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