As educators, we have a responsibility to ensure that our assessments of physical therapy students’ knowledge and skills are accurate, fair, and meaningful. Classical validity frameworks treat validity as a static property of an assessment that is generalizable once established, regardless of the context. However, this perspective lacks the complexity needed to fully represent issues related to educational assessment validity. Contemporary validity frameworks in education offer a more advanced view where assessment validity is viewed as a dynamic argument that must be grounded in the intended use and interpretation of the assessment. The validity framework put forward by Messick is widely used in health professions education and in education at large, yet it remains underutilized in physical therapy education. This session will introduce attendees to Messick’s validity framework and its application to assessments of physical therapy students’ knowledge and skills. In addition, attendees will practice applying the principles in Messick’s validity framework to develop an interpretation use argument (IUA) for an assessment in their own educational practice. 

Upon completion of this session, attendees will be able to:

1.     Identify the limitations of applying a classical validity approach to educational assessments.

2.     Describe contemporary conceptual frameworks for validity in educational assessments, including the Messick framework.

3.     Design a plan to collect high-priority validity evidence for the use of an assessment in education.

Course Instructions

1. Click on the Contents tab to watch the course recording.
2. Click the Take Quiz button to complete the assessment. Learners will have 3 attempts to pass and must answer at least 70% of questions correctly.
3. Click Fill Out Survey under the Evaluation listing to provide valuable course feedback. Scroll down on all questions as there may be answer options that expand past the size of the window.
4. Click the View/Print Your Certificate button under the Certificate listing. You can view/print your certificate at any time by visiting the APTA Learning Center and clicking the CEU Certificate/Transcript link on the left-hand side of the page. 

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