Development, Reliability, and Validity of the Occupational Therapy Self-Efficacy of Clinical Competence (OT-SECC) Assessment

Abstract

Importance: There is a lack of reliable and valid tools to measure self-efficacy of clinical competence in didactic occupational therapy education.

Objective: To determine the content validity, test-retest reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, and factor structure of the Occupational Therapy Self-Efficacy of Clinical Competence (OT-SECC) assessment.

Design: A cross-sectional psychometric study.

Setting: Two higher education institutions in the northeastern United States.

Participants: Ninety-two first- and second-year master's-level occupational therapy students.

Outcomes and measures: The 12-item OT-SECC was developed to measure self-efficacy of clinical competence on a 10-point sliding scale ranging from 0 (cannot do at all) to 10 (highly certain can do). The OT-SECC was psychometrically evaluated using classical test theory approaches.

Results: Overall, results support the reliability and validity of the OT-SECC. For instance, the assessment had good test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation [ICC(2,1) = 0.817, p < .001) and acceptable internal consistency across its two factors (αs = .838 and .923, respectively). The OT-SECC also demonstrated convergent validity across two administrations when compared with a similar assessment, the Physiotherapist Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (rs = .67 and .61, ps < .001, respectively).

Conclusions and relevance: The OT-SECC is a psychometrically sound assessment that may be used by occupational therapy programs to examine students' self-efficacy of clinical competence before attending fieldwork. Plain-Language Summary: There is an increasing responsibility for occupational therapy graduate education programs to prepare students for clinical practice. Although experiential learning activities are commonly used to teach these clinical skills, there are few valid and reliable tools to measure their effectiveness. To address this, the researchers developed the Occupational Therapy Self-Efficacy of Clinical Competence (OT-SECC) assessment. Findings show that the OT-SECC exhibits acceptable content validity, test-retest reliability, convergent validity, internal consistency, and construct validity. The assessment can be used by faculty to select instructional methods, refine experiential learning activities, assist with individual student advisement, and evaluate program effectiveness.