Date of Award

Spring 2-18-2005

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Kathleen Gathercoal, PhD

Second Advisor

Mark McMinn, PhD

Third Advisor

Gale Roid, PhD

Abstract

Interpreter services are becoming increasingly prevalent in mental health settings. The competence of mental health interpreters can be assessed using a new tool, the Interpreter Competency Exam- Mental Health (ICE-MH). Unfortunately, the current form of the ICE-MH is long. This study used archival data from the ICE-MH to assess (a) the ability of the items to discriminate the examinees' level of knowledge in mental health areas, (b) the difficulty of each item, measured by percentage of correct answers, (c) the internal consistency of each part of the test to verify the uniformity of the subtest constructs being measured, and (d) the composite score reliability index for the test as a whole. The item analysis resulted in a reduction in the number of items from 442 to 98. The composite score reliability index of the resulting measure was high (.96). Suggestions for further analyzing and refining the instrument include a review of remaining items for clarity and ease of understanding (e.g., possibly removing "all of the above" questions), conducting validity studies (e.g., samples of interpreters who are known to have the desired skills could be used as well as coupling this assessment with the results of periodic performance reviews), using a Rasch analysis on a larger sample of responses, and finally, performing a cross-validation of the test on new samples.

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