Validity and reliability of a self‐assessment scale for Dental and Oral Health (DOH) students’ perception of transferable skills in Australia

Background: The Australian Dental Council's (ADC) competency framework requires graduating dental practitioners to be competent in a number of transferable skills, which includes: Being scientifically versed, technically skilled, and capable of safe independent and team work, while adhering to high ethical standards. 1 Part of the role of dental educators is to ensure graduating students acquire requisite transferable skills, in line with regulatory requirements. 2 In order to achieve this, it is imperative to assess students’ own understanding or perception of transferable skills requirement upon graduation. The objective of this study is to develop a valid and reliable scale for this assessment. Method: A cohort of students drawn across three different dental programmes: Undergraduate Dentistry (year 1‐3); Postgraduate Dentistry (year 4‐5); Bachelor of Dental Technology/Prosthesis, participated in this study. A self‐assessment questionnaire containing relevant open‐ and closed‐ended questions was administered. The questionnaire assessed students’ perception of transferable skills for their future career, and attitude towards learning and developing transferable skills. Result: In total we successfully assessed 388 of the 391 students sampled (99.2 % response rate), their mean age was 24.3 years (SD ± 5.7), 53.3% were females, while 46.7% were males. Overall, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) extracted five factors for students’ perception of current skill level, and four factors for future skills requirements. The factor structures were confirmed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), the structure had a good model fit and high levels of reliability, with respect to individual dimension and content validity. Conclusions: The structure derived from the transferable skills survey administered to a cohort of dental students, suggests that the transferable skill survey can be utilised as a valid and reliable screening tool to test students’ perception of transferable skill requirements.