An Innovative Behavioral Interview for Pre-admission Selection of Occupational Therapy Students

Authors

Kitsum Li, Department of Occupational Therapy, Dominican University of CaliforniaFollow
Julia L. Wilbarger, Department of Occupational Therapy, Dominican University of CaliforniaFollow
Shad St. Louis, Department of Occupational Therapy, Dominican University of CaliforniaFollow

Document Type

Article

Source

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

ISSN

2573-1378

Volume

1

Issue

1

First Page

1

Last Page

17

Publication Date

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

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.