“Development and Reliability of an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) for assessing clinical skills of audiology undergraduate students in Brazil”

The aim of this study was to introduce and validate an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) as a robust assessment tool for evaluating clinical skills in audiology among third-year audiology and speech-language students. Drawing on guidelines for OSCE development, key competencies and clinical skills in audiology were identified through expert consultation. Four OSCE stations were designed comprising one theoretical and three practical stations covering essential clinical tasks. Content validity was measured using the Content Validity Coefficient (CVC), while inter-rater reliability was assessed using the Kappa coefficient and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC). The study involved 33 audiology students and eight audiologist expert evaluators. The study demonstrated high content validity of the OSCE, with CVC scores ranging from 0.97 to 1 across all stations. Inter-rater reliability analysis revealed substantial to almost perfect agreement among evaluators, with ICC values ranging from 0.94 to 0.99. Comparison of scores between evaluators revealed minimal statistically significant differences, indicating overall consistency in assessment. The results provide substantial evidence supporting the content validity, inter-rater agreement, and reliability of the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) as an effective tool for assessing the clinical skills of audiology and speech-language pathology students in the area of audiology.