Test of Competencies (TECO) in the Bachelor’s Degree Course in Occupational Therapy at the “Sapienza” University of Rome: Cross Sectional Study Internal Consistency and Discriminant Validity

The Test of Competencies (TECO) is a questionnaire created on the basis of Progress Test, in order to give a technological response for evaluating competences in big populations of students. It is used to evaluate learning progress of university students, in order to allow the improvement of skills acquisition. The aim of the study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the TECO in students of the Bachelor's degree in Occupational therapy at Sapienza University of Rome. The sample was recruited between October 2019 to December 2022. To be included in the study, the participants had to be enrolled in the bachelor's degree course of Occupational Therapy at the "Sapienza" University of Rome and had not to be outside the prescribed time for completion of exams. The test was administered digitally to 340 students. The internal consistency for the TECO score evaluated by Cronbach's alpha was excellent (alpha = 0.90). Regarding the discriminant validity, the Area Under the Curve (AUC) showed a value of 0.95 (95% CI 0.92-0.97) for the first year of the course (Fig. 1), 0.92 (95% CI 0.89-0.95) for the second year of the course and 0.81 (95% CI 0.76-0.87) for the third year of the course indicating a moderate capability to discriminate the score of year. This study had a great impact for students, researchers and academics, giving a new assessment method to evaluate learning progress of university students and improve quality of education.