Utility of the Jefferson teamwork observation guide for measuring collaborative practice competencies virtually, in-person, and across health professions: A Rasch Analysis.

Modern healthcare increasingly requires interprofessional teams to collaborate both in person and virtually to effectively achieve common goals. To prepare students for interprofessional collaborative practice (CP) universities need evaluation tools that can validly and reliably measure students' CP competencies after online and in-person interprofessional education. The Jefferson Teamwork Observation Guide® (JTOG) is a 360-degree evaluation tool previously validated to measure nationally-defined CP competencies. The psychometrics of the Individual JTOG have been examined in a sample of interprofessional healthcare students after online interprofessional education. The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Individual JTOG in 709 students after in-person interprofessional education using Rasch Modeling and compared results across collaborative settings and student professions. Results indicated that item and person statistics, unidimensionality, scaling performance, and local independence of the Individual JTOG were comparable between online and in-person samples, suggesting it is consistent in its measurement of CP competencies across collaborative settings. Psychometric properties were strong, but ceiling effects were present. Minor deviations were found in the Individual JTOG's unidimensionality between professional groups. The Values and Ethics construct was more strongly separated from others for nursing than other health professions. Recommendations for future research and possible adaptations to the instrument are discussed.

Measuring Spatial Perspective Taking: Analysis of Four Measures Using Item Response Theory.

Research on spatial thinking requires reliable and valid measures of individual differences in various component skills. Spatial perspective taking (PT)-the ability to represent viewpoints different from one's own-is one kind of spatial skill that is especially relevant to navigation. This study had two goals. First, the psychometric properties of four PT tests were examined: Four Mountains Task (FMT), Spatial Orientation Task (SOT), Perspective-Taking Task for Adults (PTT-A), and Photographic Perspective-Taking Task (PPTT). Using item response theory (IRT), item difficulty, discriminability, and efficiency of item information functions were evaluated. Second, the relation of PT scores to general intelligence, working memory, and mental rotation (MR) was assessed. All tasks showed good construct validity except for FMT. PPTT tapped a wide range of PT ability, with maximum measurement precision at average ability. PTT-A captured a lower range of ability. Although SOT contributed less measurement information than other tasks, it did well across a wide range of PT ability. After controlling for general intelligence and working memory, original and IRT-refined versions of PT tasks were each related to MR. PTT-A and PPTT showed relatively more divergent validity from MR than SOT. Tests of dimensionality indicated that PT tasks share one common PT dimension, with secondary task-specific factors also impacting the measurement of individual differences in performance. Advantages and disadvantages of a hybrid PT test that includes a combination of items across tasks are discussed.

Longitudinal development of cognitive mapping from childhood to adolescence.

Cross-sectional studies have suggested that the ability to form cognitive maps increases throughout childhood and reaches adult levels during early adolescence. However, adults show large individual differences in their ability to relate local routes to form a global map. Children also vary, but when does variation stabilize? We asked participants from a previously published cross-sectional study [Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2018), Vol. 170, pp. 86-106] to return for a second session of testing 3 years later to examine whether longitudinal stability is more evident at older ages. The subsample of 50 of the original 105 participants available for retesting did not differ from the original sample on male-female ratio or Session 1 task performance. We reassessed performance on the Virtual Silcton navigation paradigm, the Spatial Orientation Test (SOT), and the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and added parents' scores on the SOT and MRT at Timepoint 2. Our initial analyses of normative development aligned with prior cross-sectional findings; overall navigation performance reached adult levels of proficiency around 12 years of age. In addition, variation in route integration abilities, as measured by between-route pointing, stabilized around 12 years of age; that is, longitudinal stability was higher in the older cohort than in the younger cohort. The same pattern appeared for the MRT.