Multiple mini interviews for undergraduate physiotherapy entry in the United Kingdom (UK)

Rethinking the Admissions Interview: Piloting Multiple Mini-Interviews in a Graduate Psychology Program

Health profession programs routinely utilize traditional interviews in admissions as a means of assessing important non-academic characteristics (e.g., critical thinking, interpersonal skills, judgment) of candidates. However, the reliability and validity of traditional interviews is highly questionable. Given this, multiple health profession programs (e.g., medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy) have implemented multiple mini-interviews as an alternative for assessing non-academic characteristics. This paper describes the development and implementation of multiple mini-interviews in the admissions process for a doctoral clinical psychology program, one of the health professions yet to use multiple mini-interviews. This paper also examines the feasibility and acceptability of the multiple mini-interviews in this program. Results of a mixed-method survey of all 120 candidates who participated in admissions days are presented along with discussion of factors associated with satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Recommendations for program refinement and application to other graduate psychology programs for improved admissions processes are discussed.

CASPer, an online pre-interview screen for personal/professional characteristics: prediction of national licensure scores

Typically, only a minority of applicants to health professional training are invited to interview. However, pre-interview measures of cognitive skills predict for national licensure scores (Gauer et al. in Med Educ Online 21 2016) and subsequently licensure scores predict for performance in practice (Tamblyn et al. in JAMA 288(23): 3019-3026, 2002; Tamblyn et al. in JAMA 298(9):993-1001, 2007). Assessment of personal and professional characteristics, with the same psychometric rigour of measures of cognitive abilities, are needed upstream in the selection to health profession training programs. To fill that need, Computer-based Assessment for Sampling Personal characteristics (CASPer)-an on-line, video-based screening test-was created. In this paper, we examine the correlation between CASPer and Canadian national licensure examination outcomes in 109 doctors who took CASPer at the time of selection to medical school. Specifically, CASPer scores were correlated against performance on cognitive and 'non-cognitive' subsections of both the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination (MCCQE) Parts I (end of medical school) and Part II (18 months into specialty training). Unlike most national licensure exams, MCCQE has specific subcomponents examining personal/professional qualities, providing a unique opportunity for comparison. The results demonstrated moderate predictive validity of CASPer to national licensure outcomes of personal/professional characteristics three to six years after admission to medical school. These types of disattenuated correlations (r = 0.3-0.5) are not otherwise predicted by traditional screening measures. These data support the ability of a computer-based strategy to screen applicants in a feasible, reliable test, which has now demonstrated predictive validity, lending evidence of its validation for medical school applicant selection.