THE DEVELOPMENT OF A STANDARDIZED COMPETENCY EXAMINATION FOR DOCTOR OF PHARMACY STUDENTS
Abstract
The research objective was the creation of a standardized competency examination for Doctor of Pharmacy students. A test blueprint for development of examination questions was generated by a survey in which Doctor of Pharmacy practitioners provided time spent and an importance rating for twenty-eight activities, and by a content analysis of three clinical pharmacy textbooks and the American Hospital Formulary Service, the former providing therapeutic topics and the latter providing medication classes. Three hundred and thirty-one questions conforming to the activity and therapeutic topic portions of the test blueprint were judged for appropriateness to assigned activity, degree of representativeness to the knowledge or skill needed to carry out the activity, and correctness and clarity by eighteen members of a content validity panel. Chi-square analysis of panel data resulted in the acceptance of 309 items. Application of an interjudge agreement decision rule allowed acceptance of 319 items. Accepted items were administered as two, 150 item examinations to a surrogate group of over 800 Bachelor of Science students for national field trial testing. These fourth and fifth year students were necessary to ensure sufficient numbers for item analysis. Data from the field trial and content validity panel identified 125 content-valid items which discriminated significantly between high and low achieving students, measured by biserial correlation of correct response to total score. These items conformed to the activity and therapeutic topic portions of the test blueprint, and were administered to a group of ninety-seven Doctor of Pharmacy students from eight schools of pharmacy. Demographic data allowed norm creation on the basis of academic pathway, curricular location, duration of professional practice experience and clinical rotation, professional licensure, and amount of coursework in the subject areas of pharmacokinetics, drug information-literature analysis, statistics, and therapeutics. Interpretation of these norms allows evaluation of didactic instruction and progress toward competency attainment by Doctor of Pharmacy students.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Health education|Pharmaceuticals
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.