Creation of an admission process for BSc occupational therapy students including multiple mini-interviews (MMI)

Introduction: The admission procedure (EAV) of the bachelor's degree program in occupational therapy was newly developed on the basis of defined entry criteria and evaluated for the first time with regard to quality criteria. The aim of this article is to describe the procedure for the development and to report on the initial results concerning reliability and predictive validity. Further interests were, whether previous education has an influence on the performance achieved in the procedure and how cost-intensive the new procedure is. Method: First, the entry criteria were defined, and in the next step valid methods were identified to collect the entry criteria, including the so-called multiple mini-interviews to test social skills. In a final step, the results were statistically verified. Results: The procedure showed moderate internal consistency. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between the overall result of the admission procedure and the assessment grade, whereby previous education had no influence on the results of the admission procedure. Conclusions: The new admission procedure can predict academic success after the first year of study, it is cost-effective, and thus offers promising new possibilities for the design of admission procedures in Occupational Therapy