Establishing Content Validity of a Student Pharmacist Patient Counseling Competency Assessment in Oncology

Abstract

Objective. The main goal of this project was to establish content validity and describe internal consistency of a patient counseling competency assessment instrument used to evaluate student pharmacists practicing in an oncology setting.

Methods. A modified e-Delphi panel of oncology clinical pharmacy specialists, clinical pharmacy generalists, and oncology pharmacy residents was employed. Iterative rounds of the e-Delphi process were conducted until consensus was reached on a majority of the instrument items. Consensus was defined as agreement by at least 75% of participants that an item was, or was not important. Internal consistency of defined sections of the instrument was determined using Cronbach alpha.

Results. The modified e-Delphi process included three rounds of responses from 13 panelists and resulted in a 35-item instrument with consensus reached on 33/35 (94%) of the items, and a Cronbach alpha of 0.95. All participants indicated that the assessment result options allowed them to indicate the student’s level of competency either extremely well or very well.

Conclusion. A modified e-Delphi method used to validate a reliable instrument for the assessment of student pharmacist counseling abilities in the oncology setting. Similar methodology should be considered during the development of student assessment tools, especially for high impact student pharmacist activities such as chemotherapeutic medication counseling.