Design, implementation and evaluation of OSPE exam to evaluate the competence of occupational health and safety engineering students

Background and Aim: One of the concerns of occupational health engineering lecturers is acquisition an acceptable level of skill and ability by learners, which is also emphasized in the educational curriculum.Paying attention to abilities and practical skills in exams can answer these concerns to some extent.Therefore, this study was carried out with the aim of designing, implementing and evaluating the OSPE exam at the end of the undergraduate course.Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted cross-sectionally on the students of occupational health engineering after the end of their internship.First, the exam committee was formed and then focused group discussion meetings (FGD) were held and the study was conducted in three phases: design, implementation and evaluation.The scenarios of the stations (12 stations) were designed according to the competences and practical skills of the educational curriculum.The evaluation of the exam included the determination of formal and content validity, student satisfaction, reliability, and the determination of the internal correlation of the exam scores. Results:The content validity of the exam was around average from the point of view of the students and professors in all stations with a significance level of 0.05.The results of Cronbach's alpha coefficient showed that there was a high correlation between the scores of the stations (=0.7) and between the scores of the stations and the overall score of OSPE (=0.8).Students' satisfaction with the exam was average.In addition, by examining the results of qualitative data, two classes and several subclasses were obtained.The mentioned two classes were identified as strengths and weaknesses of the exam.Conclusion: Although the OSPE exam has weaknesses, it can be used as a standard and suitable method to show the competence and practical skills of learners.It seems that much more studies should be carried out in the field of health sciences especially regarding exam design and standard scenario writing methods, in order to judge its validity and reliability as an evaluation tool.At the same time, using OSPE as a supplement to traditional exams is very valuable.