Validation on the psychometrics of the Professional Suitability Scale with social work students in Hong Kong

Abstract

Literature has documented social work educators’ difficulties in evaluating students’ performance andsupported the development of a reliable and valid instrument for measuring professional suitability,which is referred to a demonstration of knowledge, skills, values, and appropriate professionalbehaviors in given practice situations. This paper presents results of a validation study aimed atexamining the reliability and validity of a revised version of the Professional Suitability Scale withundergraduate social work students in Hong Kong. The Scale was developed in Canada with good–excellent internal consistency and acceptable construct validity (Tam et al., 2013). However, theScale has not been tested for stability reliability; lacked external criteria for empirical validation on thecriterion-related validity and construct validity; and has never been tested with student population. Thereported study used a test-re-test evaluation design to collect data from fourth year social workstudents and their field placement supervisors, and the Professional Opinion Scale (Abbott, 1998) asexternal criterion to test for stability reliability, internal consistence, and concurrent validity. Results ofthis study evidence excellent stability reliability and internal consistence, and a moderate concurrentvalidity. The results of this validation study echoes previous studies on the professional suitabilityscale and suggests potential usage of this Scale, which could be used as one of the evaluation toolsfor schools of social work to assess the professional suitability of students’ at different stagesthroughout their program. The paper will also discuss experience from using the test-re-test designand implications on response rate issues.