Psychometric properties of a test in evidence based practice: the Spanish version of the Fresno test

Before and after study performed between October 2007 and June 2008. Three groups of participants: (a) Mentors of family medicine residents (expert group) (n = 56); (b) Family medicine physicians (intermediate experience group) (n = 17); (c) Family medicine residents (novice group) (n = 202); Medical residents attended an EBP course, and two sets of the test were administered before and after the course. The Fresno test is a performance based measure for use in medical education that assesses EBP skills. The outcome measures were: inter-rater and intra-rater reliability, internal consistency, item analyses, construct validity, feasibility of administration, and responsiveness.Inter-rater correlations were 0.95 and 0.85 in the pre-test and the post-test respectively. The overall intra-rater reliability was 0.71 and 0.81 in the pre-test and post-test questionnaire, respectively. Cronbach's alpha was 0.88 and 0.77, respectively. 152 residents (75.2%) returned both sets of the questionnaire. The observed effect size for the residents was 1.77 (CI 95%: 1.57-1.95), the standardised response mean was 1.65 (CI 95%:1.47-1.82).The Spanish version of the Fresno test is a useful tool in assessing the knowledge and skills of EBP in Spanish-speaking residents of Family Medicine.Educators implementing Evidence Based Practice (EBP) training need instruments to evaluate the programmatic impact of new curricula and to document the competence of individual trainees. Several systematic reviews have examined the instruments used to evaluate the effectiveness of educational programs. [1,2] Shaneyfelt et al. reviewed the available EBP teaching instrument methods, including 115 studies that represented 104 unique instruments[2]. The authors identified high-quality instruments for evaluating the EBP competence of individual trainees and for determining the effectiveness of EBP curricula. High quality instruments are distinguished by the ability to discriminate between different levels of ex