Validation of the Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Survey Retrospective Pre-test Measures

Measurement tools in interprofessional education (IPE) are at their infancy. Establishing the effectiveness of IPE experiences is essential, and the current assessment measures may be subject to various types of bias. Innovations in the assessment of IPE activities should be a priority, including assessing the properties of existing widely used measures. Traditional pretest/posttest measures are believed to measure change as a result of an IPE experience by asking learners to identify knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors before an IPE experience and then again after the experience. The Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Survey (ICCAS) is designed to be completed after an IPE experience, it includes post-test and retrospective pre-test measures of perceived abilities. Because the ICCAS does not include a true pre-IPE experience assessment, there are potential risks of response-shift bias and social desirability bias. To address these concerns, Jackson (2017) proposed conducting a true ICCAS pre-test before the interprofessional learning experience and examining the differences between the true and retrospective pre-test scores, as well as the differences between these pre-test measures and post-test scores. This evaluation design was implemented in two in-person 2.5-hour Interprofessional (IP) Forums conducted in the Fall (N = 745) and following Spring (N = 598) semesters. Students from eleven professions including medicine, pharmacy, dental medicine, nursing, public health, social work, physical therapy, occupational therapy, athletic training, management, and dietetics were included in these samples. True ICCAS pre-test scores did not significantly differ from the retrospective pre-test scores in either sample, although the effect sizes for pre-test to post-test skill gains were slightly smaller for the true pre-test scores. These results support confidence in the use of the standard ICCAS retrospective pre-test measures and demonstrate that this method is not adversely impacted by social desirability or response shift biases.