Assessment of bachelor's theses in a nursing degree with a rubrics system: Development and validation study

Abstract

Background: Writing a bachelor thesis (BT) is the last step to obtain a nursing degree. In order to perform an effective assessment of a nursing BT, certain reliable and valid tools are required. Objectives: To develop and validate a 3-rubric system (drafting process, dissertation, and viva) to assess final year nursing students' BT. Design: A multi-disciplinary study of content validity and psychometric properties. The study was carried out between December 2014 and July 2015. Settings: Nursing Degree at Universitat Jaume I. Spain. Participants: Eleven experts (9 nursing professors and 2 education professors from 6 different universities) took part in the development and content validity stages. Fifty-two theses presented during the 2014–2015 academic year were included by consecutive sampling of cases in order to study the psychometric properties. Methods: First, a group of experts was created to validate the content of the assessment system based on three rubrics (drafting process, dissertation, and viva). Subsequently, a reliability and validity study of the rubrics was carried out on the 52 theses presented during the 2014–2015 academic year. Results: The BT drafting process rubric has 8 criteria (S-CVI = 0.93; α = 0.837; ICC = 0.614), the dissertation rubric has 7 criteria (S-CVI = 0.9; α = 0.893; ICC = 0.74), and the viva rubric has 4 criteria (S-CVI = 0.86; α = 8.16; ICC = 0.895). Conclusion: A nursing BT assessment system based on three rubrics (drafting process, dissertation, and viva) has been validated. This system may be transferred to other nursing degrees or degrees from other academic areas. It is necessary to continue with the validation process taking into account factors that may affect the results obtained.