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Article
An Innovative Behavioral Interview for Pre-admission Selection of Occupational Therapy Students
Journal of Occupational Therapy Education
  • Kitsum Li, Department of Occupational Therapy, Dominican University of California
  • Julia L Wilbarger, Department of Occupational Therapy, Dominican University of California
  • Shad St. Louis, Department of Occupational Therapy, Dominican University of California
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Department
Occupational Therapy
Abstract

The goal for pre-admission interview is to identify students who will be successful both academically and professionally. The traditional structured pre-admission interview has not been shown to be effective in predicting students’ success in academic and fieldwork performance. This article describes an innovative behavioral interview process during which applicants interviewed simulated clients as part of the preadmission selection process. The goals of the pre-admission behavioral interview were to observe applicants’ behavior as team players, and to assess their interpersonal communication skills, capability to be reflective, and professionalism. During the behavioral interview, faculty interviewers assessed the applicants’ performance in the planning phase, the simulated client interview phase and the reflection phase. The behavioral interview was evaluated with a feasibility study using a mixed methods, single group exploratory design. Results showed that applicants, simulated clients, and faculty interviewers positively endorsed the behavioral interview. In addition, applicants found the behavioral interview less intimidating than a traditional structured interview, and appreciated the opportunity to interact with faculty and demonstrate their communication skills and ability to collaborate in a team. Similarly, faculty interviewers found the behavioral interview fruitful when observing the applicants “in action” and displaying their non-academic attributes, demonstrating potential to be successful students in the program. While being one of the stronger predictors, the behavioral interview scores only weakly correlated with the admitted applicants’ first semester Grade Point Averages. Further longitudinal evaluation may demonstrate the potential of the behavioral interview as a pre-admission tool identifying students who may be successful both in academic and fieldwork performance.

Rights

Copyright © 2017 the author(s)

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International
Citation Information
Kitsum Li, Julia L Wilbarger and Shad St. Louis. "An Innovative Behavioral Interview for Pre-admission Selection of Occupational Therapy Students" Journal of Occupational Therapy Education Vol. 1 Iss. 1 (2017) p. 1 - 17 ISSN: 2573-1378
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/kitsum_li/86/