Consensus development on the essential competencies for Iranian public health nutritionists.

OBJECTIVE: To assess key experts' opinion regarding essential competencies required for effective public health nutrition practice within the health-care system of Iran. DESIGN: Qualitative study using the modified Delphi technique through an email-delivered questionnaire. SETTING: Iran. SUBJECTS: Fifty-five experts were contacted through email. The inclusion criterion for the study panel was being in a relevant senior-level position in nutrition science or public health nutrition in Iran. RESULTS: In the first round, forty-two out of fifty-five experts responded to the questionnaire (response rate=76 %). A sixty-five-item questionnaire was designed with nine competency areas, including 'nutrition science', 'planning and implementing nutritional interventions', 'health and nutrition services', 'advocacy and communication', 'assessment and analysis', 'evaluation', 'cultural, social and political aspects', 'using technology' and 'leadership and management'. All experts who had participated in the first round completed a modified version of the questionnaire with seventy-seven items in the second round. The experts scored 'nutrition science' as the most essential competency area, while more applied areas such as 'management and leadership' were less emphasized. In both rounds, the mean difference between the opinions of the necessity of each area was 5.6 %. CONCLUSIONS: The Iranian experts had general agreement on most of the core competency areas of public health nutritionists. The results indicated the need for capacity building and revisions to educational curricula for public health nutritionist programmes, with more emphasis on skill-based competency development.

Psychometric properties of a Farsi version of the authentic assessment perception questionnaire.

The term 'authentic assessment' has recently gained widespread use in education. A five-dimensional questionnaire for authentic assessment was translated into Farsi. The questionnaire which comprises 29 items, divided into 5 subscales (task, physical context, social context, result/form and criteria) was developed in English by Dr. Gulikers and her colleagues in the Netherlands. The questionnaire was translated using a forward-backward method and was pilot tested in terms of translation clarity and applicability. The psychometric properties of the Persian version of the questionnaire were evaluated in terms of face, content, and construct validity in addition to test-retest reliability. A convenience sample of 230 dental students (70 males and 160 females) studying in four dental schools in Tehran city was recruited to evaluate the reliability and construct validity of the Persian version. The quality rating of the translations was favorable, suggesting a high quality of both forward and backward translations. The Content Validity Index (CVI) and Ratio (CVR) for the final Farsi version of the questionnaire were found to be acceptable. Cronbach alpha coefficients for all subscales ranged from 0.78-0.91. These preliminary results suggest that a five dimensional questionnaire in its Farsi version may be a valuable tool in dental education assessment and studies.