What Do Entrustable Professional Activities Measure? Evidence From Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Measuring What's Difficult to Measure: Investigations of Instruments Used in the Health Professions to Understand Important Latent Constructs

Abstract

The purposes of this study were twofold: 1) to discover the number of underlying latent structures of 13 entrustable professional activities (EPAs); and 2) to confirm the a priori proposed latent structure of the relationships among EPAs. A total of 382 surveys from program directors was collected to assess our graduates on 13 EPAs. Half of the surveys were randomly selected to explore the number of underlying latent factors using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The remaining surveys were used to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis to achieve the second aim. The result of EFA provided the evidence that EPAs only measure one latent construct: entrustability. The result of the CFA confirmed the unidimensionality of EPAs.

Authors

• Chi Chang, Michigan State University

• Heather Laird-Fick, Michigan State University

• Brian Mavis, Michigan State University

• Ling Wang, Michigan State University

• David J. Solomon, Michigan State University

• Carol Parker, Michigan State University