Grade correspondence between internal and external examiners of occupational therapy students’ bachelor theses

Abstract

Students’ grades are increasingly important in defining their future employability, and therefore, securing a fair assessment of students’ theses is important. This study aimed to assess the level of grade correspondence between internal and external examiners of occupational therapy students’ bachelor theses, and to evaluate the overall level of grades initially set by examiners in the two groups. The grades initially suggested for 67 bachelor theses were analyzed. Absolute agreement between internal and external examiners was estimated as the proportion of theses on which the examiners suggested identical grades (percentage agreement), and consistency in agreement was estimated by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). There was absolute agreement between the internal and the external examiners in 33 of the 67 cases (49.3 %), and also consistency in agreement was high (ICC = 0.81, 95 % CI [0.68, 0.88], p < 0.001). The results from this study demonstrate a high level of agreement between internal and external examiners of occupational therapy students’ bachelor theses. However, internal examiners as a group are more prone to give high grades compared to external examiners, and this may support the continued use of two examiners to ensure quality in grading.