Measuring hygiene competence: the picture-based situational judgement test HygiKo

Abstract

Background With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020, the crucial role of hygiene in healthcare settings has once again become very clear. For diagnostic and for didactic purposes, standardized and reliable tests suitable to assess the competencies involved in “working hygienically” are required. However, existing tests usually use self-report questionnaires, which are suboptimal for this purpose. In the present study, we introduce the newly developed, competence-oriented HygiKo test instrument focusing health-care professionals’ hygiene competence and report empirical evidence regarding its psychometric properties. Methods HygiKo is a Situational Judgement Test (SJT) to assess hygiene competence. The HygiKo-test consists of twenty pictures (items), each item presents only one unambiguous hygiene lapse. For each item, test respondents are asked (1) whether they recognize a problem in the picture with respect to hygiene guidelines and, (2) if yes, to describe the problem in a short verbal response. Our sample comprised n = 149 health care professionals (79.1 % female; age: M = 26.7 years, SD = 7.3 years) working as clinicians or nurses. The written responses were rated by two independent raters with high agreement (α > 0.80), indicating high reliability of the measurement. We used Item Response Theory (IRT) for further data analysis. Results We report IRT analyses that show that the HygiKo-test is suitable to assess hygiene competence and that it allows to distinguish between persons demonstrating different levels of ability for seventeen of the twenty items), especially for the range of low to medium person abilities. Hence, the HygiKo-SJT is suitable to get a reliable and competence-oriented measure for hygiene-competence. Conclusions In its present form, the HygiKo-test can be used to assess the hygiene competence of medical students, medical doctors, nurses and trainee nurses in cross-sectional measurements. In order to broaden the difficulty spectrum of the current test, additional test items with higher difficulty should be developed. The Situational Judgement Test designed to assess hygiene competence can be helpful in testing and teaching the ability of working hygienically. Further research for validity is needed.

COVID-19: Development and implementation of a video-conference-based educational concept to improve the hygiene skills of health and nursing professionals in the Republic of Kosovo

“…For some situations, practical exercises were demonstrated (e.g., correct performance of hygienic hand disinfection and verification using fluorescent disinfectant and UV blacklight, correct donning and doffing of personal protective equipment (PPE), protective measures in special situations such as during resuscitation). Knowledge transfer from the online training was evaluated using a Situational Judgement Test (SJT) [ 23 ] at the beginning and end of the seminar series. The HygiKo-SJT uses picture vignettes to describe everyday hygiene-relevant situations in the clinical setting (e.g., behaviour during examination situations, patient transport, in the operating room) and assesses hygiene competencies in the areas of technical knowledge and practical skills [ 23 ].…”

“…Knowledge transfer from the online training was evaluated using a Situational Judgement Test (SJT) [ 23 ] at the beginning and end of the seminar series. The HygiKo-SJT uses picture vignettes to describe everyday hygiene-relevant situations in the clinical setting (e.g., behaviour during examination situations, patient transport, in the operating room) and assesses hygiene competencies in the areas of technical knowledge and practical skills [ 23 ]. The vignettes are used to identify points of hygiene-related learning that must then be listed.…”

“…If the situation depicted is correctly identified and described, the participants receive one point, so that a total score of 0 to 12 points is possible. The reported item response theory (IRT) analyses on the HygiKo-SJT show that the test is suitable for assessing hygiene competence and to distinguish between individuals who have different hygiene-related competence levels (for 17 of the 20 items/pictures) [ 23 ], [ 24 ]. In this context, the competency question is particularly sensitive for the low to intermediate competency range [ 23 ].…”

Sexual and Reproductive Health: How Can Situational Judgment Tests Help Assess the Norm and Identify Target Groups? A Field Study in Sierra Leone

“…Arguments for SJTs are that they are less prone to bias associated with self-report ( Lipnevich et al, 2013 ), such as “faking” or the practice of respondents trying to give an answer that they suspect the enumerator will think is the best choice. To our knowledge, the only application of SJTs to health behaviors is a paper by Heininger et al (2021) on hand-hygiene competence. However, it remains a measure of skills, while in our study, we are interested in measuring the respondent perception of what they would do in a situation.…”

Correction to: Measuring hygiene competence: the picture-based situational judgement test HygiKo

“…Following publication of the original article [ 1 ], the authors identified and would like to correct:…”