Measuring health professions students’ teamwork behavior using peer assessment: Validation of an online tool

Abstract

Abstract Teamwork, an interprofessional competency, lends itself toward behaviorally based assessments. Peer assessment within interprofessional education is one method to determine how an individual's team skills are perceived by others on a team. Peer assessment has been used in numerous learning contexts to evaluate professionalism, including the health sciences. Yet there appears to be few, if any reports, regarding peer assessment of learners collaborating as an interprofessional team. We used the Comprehensive Assessment of Team-Member Effectiveness (CATME), an online teamwork survey application to facilitate self and peer teamwork assessments within the context of a large, required, interprofessional service-learning program at the University of Florida. This paper describes the validation of CATME for use among health sciences students. Data from 1351 students was collected across two academic years, 2014–2015 and 2015–2016, related to three behavioral characteristics, and measures of team satisfaction and psychological safety. Statistical procedures employed included an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and item analysis. Results provided evidence that 90% of the variance was explained by a single factor solution. Our validation provided evidence that CATME is a suitable tool for the formative evaluation of teamwork behaviors in clinical health science programs but could be further refined to improve itself usability.