Translation, reliability and validity of the assessment of professional skills of occupational therapy students (Chinese version)

Abstract Background A new instrument was developed in Spanish contexts, namely Assessment of Professional Skills of Occupational Therapy Students (CPTO). To date, no translated version of CPTO was available in Chinese milieu. Therefore, the aim of study was to translate the CPTO into Chinese and determine the psychometric properties of the translated Chinese version of CPTO. Methods The cross-sectional psychometric evaluation study, aligned with the four translation procedures was conducted to translate the CPTO into Chinese language. Nine experts were included in the two-round Delphi consultation process, and 103 students in two universities were invited to participate in the pilot test to examine the preliminary reliability and validity of the translated version of CPTO. SPSS version 26.0 (Chicago, IL, USA) and R (version 4.3.1; R Core Team, 2023) were used to perform data analysis. Results Of nine experts recruited in the Delphi consultation process, five (55.56%) experts were women. The mean length of practice in their respective professions was 21 years. The mean Spearman’s rho values ± SD were 0.88 ± 0.21 in the second round of Delphi consultation. The differences in the mean scores of Spearman’s rho of all experts between paired round 1 and round 2 were significant (Z=-2.33, p < 0.05). The mean SIQR values were 0.05 (SD = 0.12) in the second round. The importance rating of each item achieved threshold values of importance through two-round Delphi consultation. The value of the I-CVI for all items was between 0.8 and 1. The S-CVI/Ave was equal to 0.98 in the second round. All 103 invited students agreed to participate, yielding a response rate of 100%. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated a good fit to the data with standardized factor loadings ranging from 0.55 to 0.98. The translated Chinese version of CPTO demonstrated excellent inter-rater agreement (total scale ICC = 0.787; section ICCs: 0.817–0.961) and strong test-retest reliability (total scale ICC = 0.896; section ICCs: 0.759–0.955). The Cronbach’s α of the total-scale CPTO was 0.950. The Spearman’s rho between the total score of CPTO and scores of each section of CPTO were 0.43, 0.77, 0.84 for the s-section, c-section, p-section, respectively (all p < 0.001). For the total-scale CPTO, the percentages of participants in the low (0-150), medium (151–154), high (155–183), excellent (184 or above) categories were 24.27%, 25.24%, 25.25%, 25.24%, respectively. Conclusion The study showed that the translated Chinese version of CPTO had good reliability and validity for assessing the professional skills and clinical competencies of occupational therapy students.