The Construction and Evaluation of Simulations to Assess Professional Interviewing Skills

ABSTRACT

Courses preparing students for interviews commonly held in organisations often form part of the curriculum of senior secondary, higher, university, and in‐service education. In these courses, students are prepared for their future work practice. Assessment of student performance after attending such a course requires a different assessment method from the traditional written examination. In this article we describe the construction and evaluation of simulations. The results of an investigation into their quality show that they are reliable in terms of measures of internal consistency and inter‐rater reliability. However, it turned out that a student's score is highly dependent on the content of the interview. We found support for the simulations’ construct and content validity. Although the simulation is not an efficient instrument, its benefits are high: students are stimulated to do their best in practising for the interviews, and weaknesses in students’ performances will be detected so that remedial teaching can be offered.