Students’ attitudes and perceptions of teaching and assessment of evidence-based practice in an occupational therapy professional Master’s curriculum: a mixed methods study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Most health professions, including occupational therapy, have made the application of evidence-based practice a desired competency and professional responsibility. Despite the increasing emphasis on evidence-based practice for improving patient outcomes, there are numerous research-practice gaps in the health professions. In addition to efforts aimed at promoting evidence-based practice with clinicians, there is a strong impetus for university programs to design curricula that will support the development of the knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviours associated with evidence-based practice. Though occupational therapy curricula in North America are becoming increasingly focused on evidence-based practice, research on students' attitudes towards evidence-based practice, their perceptions regarding the integration and impact of this content within the curricula, and the impact of the curriculum on their readiness for evidence-based practice is scarce. The present study examined occupational therapy students' perceptions towards the teaching and assessment of evidence-based practice within a professional master's curriculum and their self-efficacy for evidence-based practice. METHODS: The study used a mixed methods explanatory sequential design. The quantitative phase included a cross-sectional questionnaire exploring attitudes towards evidence-based practice, perceptions of the teaching and assessment of evidence-based practice and evidence-based practice self-efficacy for four cohorts of students enrolled in the program and a cohort of new graduates. The questionnaire was followed by a focus group of senior students aimed at further exploring the quantitative findings. RESULTS: All student cohorts held favourable attitudes towards evidence-based practice; there was no difference across cohorts. There were significant differences with regards to perceptions of the teaching and assessment of evidence-based practice within the curriculum; junior cohorts and students with previous education had less favourable perceptions. Students' self-efficacy for evidence-based practice was significantly higher across cohorts. Four main themes emerged from the focus group data: (a) Having mixed feelings about the value of evidence-based practice (b) Barriers to the application of evidence-based practice; (c) Opposing worlds and (d) Vital and imperfect role of the curriculum. CONCLUSION: This study provides important data to support the design and revision of evidence-based practice curricula within professional rehabilitation programs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".