Predicting Academic, Clinical, and Licensure Examination Performance in a Professional (Entry-Level) Masterʼs Degree Program in Physical Therapy

Abstract

Background and Purpose. Physical therapy schools use a variety of admission criteria to select qualified candidates who will succeed academically and professionally. Outcome variables include scholastic achievement, clinical competence, and successful passage of the licensure examination. Identifying reliable and valid predictors presents significant challenges. The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of one set of admission criteria to a master's degree program in physical therapy to predict graduate program grade point average (GPA), applied skills as measured by the Clinical Performance Instrument (CPI), and national physical therapy licensure examination (NPTE) scores. Subjects. A retrospective multiple regression analysis focused on 121 students who earned an entry-level master's degree in physical therapy (MPT) at the College of St Catherine from 1998 to 2001. Methods. Admission criteria included overall and prerequisite preadmission GPAs, Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores, and admission committee evaluations of multiple factors. Outcome variables were final cumulative MPT GPA (MPTGPA) and CPI and NPTE scores. Results. The MPT grades were best predicted by preadmission grades. With GRE scores and age, prior grades accounted for 37% of the variability in graduate grades. The MPTGPA was the best predictor of NPTE scores; however, with prior grades and GSE scores, it accounted for only 11% of NPTE variability. The CPI scores increased significantly across 4 placements over a 2-year period, but were not predictable above chance level by any of the present variables. Discussion and Conclusion. Academic outcomes of MPT grades can be moderately predicted using traditional admission criteria. However, licensure examination scores appear to be only weakly predictable. The total absence of predictability of clinical performance, as measured by the CPI, is problematic and demands closer evaluation. Restricted ranges in both the admission and outcome variables contributed to the limited predictive power of the present admission criteria. Key Words: Admission criteria, Clinical Performance Instrument, National Physical Therapy Examination, Predicting academic performance, Predicting clinical performance. INTRODUCTION Competition for admission to Professional (entry-level) master's degree programs in physical therapy (MPT programs) has declined due to smaller numbers of applicants in the last few years.' Nonetheless, there is still a need to use discriminating selection criteria that can effectively identify candidates capable of successfully completing a rigorous academic program, displaying effective clinical performance and passing the national physical therapy !!censure examination (NPTE) at the outset of their professional careers. Surveys of admission criteria used in allied health professions, including physical therapy, confirm the strong reliance on previous scholastic achievement, including both overall preadmission grade point average (GPA) and GPA based on prerequisite science courses (most often biology, anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and physics).2-7 When academic performance in the physical therapy program is the dependent variablc in a forecasting study, it is logical to use as one's predictor the same type of behavior at the undergraduate level (overall and prerequisite GPAs). Indeed, in several studies,**' ' 2 prior GPA was found to be the single best predictor of physical therapy grades. Unfortunately, physical therapy grade predictors have not been found to be equally reliable forecasters of clinical performance.13 Silver and Hodgson14 have recently reported similar constraints on predicting clinical performance in medical school. Attempts to predict clinical skills have introduced a quite different set of issues for admission committees, as well as for researchers investigating this question. The first difficulty is identifying admission measures that assess applicants' potential for developing skills necessary for clinical competence, although interviews, reference letters, and application essays have all been used with varying amounts of success. …