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Identifying a valid credential for your profession is requisite to a successful career. Many certifications claim to be accredited, legally defensible or valid, but they in fact are not and there is no regulatory body to sanction these unethical practices. To identify if the certification is valid and provides legal defensibility it will be accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA). The NCCA is a voluntary accrediting body that oversees legitimate certification programs in the fitness industry as well as certification programs offered in other industries. To identify valid certification agencies go to Accredited Certification Programs . Below are frequently asked questions regarding valid certification.   Personal Trainer Credentialing Frequently Asked Questions
  Professional certification is most often defined as a voluntary process, the purpose of which is to provide professional recognition of knowledge, skills, and clinical practice. Most commonly a non-governmental agency or association grants professional recognition to an individual who has met certain predetermined qualifications which are validated by performance and/or compliance with the requirements of established standards as specified by that agency or association. Certification is granted once an individual has successfully completed the process of testing and evaluation against the specifications designed to document, verify, and recognize the competence of that person to perform a function or service, usually for a specified time. Accreditation is broadly defined as a voluntary, self-regulatory process by which governmental, non-governmental, voluntary associations or other statutory bodies grant formal recognition to programs or institutions that meet stated quality criteria. Recognized accreditation is a peer-reviewed process designed to protect the public interest by applying specific standards to the quality of a program or institution. What is the difference between certification and certificate programs? Certification refers to an earned credential that demonstrates the certificant’s specialized knowledge, skills, and experience as validated through a standardized process of assessment. In most cases, after meeting defined eligibility criteria, a certification candidate achieves a nationally recognized credential through successful completion of a rigorous examination. A certificate program is an educational offering that confers a document (certificate) at the program’s conclusion; the participant’s possession of the certificate may be indicative of attendance only and not necessarily a measure of knowledge or skills. Certificates are most commonly used to donate participation even if an exam is administered, while certifications are documents of a valid and standardized evaluative process. What does legal defensibility mean for a Certification Credential? A test is legally defensible if it has been developed under sound practices resulting in a quality examination that is psychometrically sound and can be defended in the event of a legal challenge. The defensibility in a court of law for a professional credential is often referred to as the “bullet proof test” or measure of psychometric soundness. Psychometric soundness means that the examination has been developed according to guidelines set forth for valid measurement and assessment. Generally, the test development complies with the standards put forth by the American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association, National Council on Measurement in Education and the Association of Test Publishers. Valid test development is a rigorous process which begins by identification of the skills and knowledge that define the practice of the profession through a role delineation or job analysis study. The intensive study forms the basis upon which test items are created and linked back to the job analysis forming the foundation for the credential’s validity. The whole process ensures that the test items have been developed to cover content deemed essential for the practice of the profession and that the test adequately assesses a candidate’s knowledge, skills, and judgments within the practice domain. The test must be valid, meaning it tests what it needs to test; reliable, meaning it provides a consistent way to measure different candidates with predictable results; and fair, meaning that the test gives no advantage to one candidate over another, except by having more of the knowledge or ability being measured. If the credentialing test is developed to have these characteristics, and if subsequent research confirms the presence of these characteristics, and if documentation exists to provide this evidence, the test would be termed legally defensible. A legally defensible test can withstand a legal challenge as to its appropriateness for the purposes for which it is being used. What is the difference between a Board Certification Exam and all others? Legitimate Boards for Certification provide a certification program and recertification standards for certified professionals. In most cases the purpose of the certification program is to establish standards for entry into a profession. The role of the Board for Certification is to manage the certification program including continuing education requirements to ensure; autonomy in decision making, valid test construction and administration of legally defensible certification exams, activities in the best interests of all stakeholders, and protection for the public. Boards are elected by the constituency of the particular profession. Professionals participate in a regulated election process which allows for free decision making regarding the individuals selected to represent the stakeholders of the exam. Candidates for the Board are nominated and slated based upon their qualifications to perform the job and effectively and fairly represent the stakeholders of the credential. The Board elections prevent undue influence from external or internal sources. Essentially Boards provide a transparency so that all actions and decisions contribute to the better good of the program and all of the stakeholders it affects. The Board of Certification should annually review the requirements for certification eligibility and standards for continuing education as well as review and revises the certification examination in accordance with the test specifications of the Role Delineation Study. In most cases the Role Delineation Study/Job Task Analysis is reviewed and revised every five years. Board for Certifications use a criterion-referenced passing point for the anchor form of the examination. Essentially establishing a cut score by which the minimally qualified candidate will successfully attain certification. Each version of the examination is equated to the anchor version to ensure that candidates are not rewarded or penalized for taking different versions of the examination. Exams constructed without the use of a Board are often questioned for undue influence and appropriate development methodology. In most cases an education body will construct an exam to reflect content from the education program. The exams often reflect the opinion of an individual or small group rather than of a consortium through appropriate role delineation. Non-Board exams often lack the key components to provide legal defensibility. Two inherent flaws with non-Board exams for credential are 1) there is no way to ensure autonomy in decision making and 2) that the purpose for the exam is in the best interests of the stakeholders. Essentially anyone can put together a program make a test and call it a certification. It though provides no benefit to the certification holder. What should a stakeholder look for in a credential or Board for Certification? A certification program should provide for Autonomy, Transparency, Accountability, Legal Defensibility, Sustainability and Fiduciary. These five terms suggest compliance with external and internal audit, essentially meeting the needs of all stakeholders. The primary objective of credentialing and certification is to provide all stakeholders, including members of the public, with confidence that an individual that has successfully earned a certification, and claims a level of expertise by virtue of the certification, is credible, verifiably and not misleading as to both their substance and their source. To accomplish this, autonomy in decision making must exist. True autonomy rids a certification program of undue influence so it can effectively serve the stakeholders. Transparency suggests that the credential is visibly credible, void of inappropriate influence or activity from internal or external source, and functions in clear view of all stakeholders. Accountability demonstrates that all individuals associated with the credential are held to a standard of practice, and the credential itself is required to meet certain criteria to serve as a legal measure of competency. Accountability is assigned to the Board, Credential, and Certificant. The Board must comply with the standards set forth in its bylaws, the credential is responsible for being in compliance with standards of test development and administration while certificants are required to comply with a Code of Ethics and Professional Standards. The Certification program, as part of its accountability, should be legally defensible. It must comply with the standard rigors of test development and administration as well as maintain a system of support to ensure ongoing validity. This ongoing process demonstrates sustainability. Sustainability is two fold; 1) the credential should have the ability to provide long term professional competence assurance and 2) the certificants should be able to sustain their credential via appropriate methods to maintain legal defensibility. The credential should be fiduciary in that the purpose for the credential is that based on or held in trust. What is required for a valid certification exam? When a credentialing program is developed it should go through the appropriate rigors for valid assessment of a test candidate. To do so there are four primary areas which must be considered to validate the process and subsequently provide legal defensibility. The assessment must maintain 1) Content-related evidence of validity 2) Appropriate pass/fail standard 3) Reliability and 4) Fairness. The developmental process and the administration of the exam forms must comply with these four areas for it to be considered a valid exam and credential. Content-related evidence of validity The purpose of a credentialing test is to certify that successful candidates have important knowledge and skills necessary for safe and effective practice in a particular domain of activity. The practice domain is a set of job tasks, knowledge elements, and/or skills that are used in the real world. Test scores are used to make inferences about the candidate’s ability to perform job tasks, and/or their ability to recall and use enabling knowledge, or demonstrate enabling skills. The content of the test is referred to as the test domain. The test domain is described by a test blueprint. The test blueprint describes the knowledge and skills that a candidate is to demonstrate on the test. If a test is to allow inferences to be made about a candidate’s ability in the practice domain, the test domain and the practice domain must match up. That is, the test must represent enough of the knowledge and skills used in the practice domain, in the right proportions, to allow the inferences to be made. When the test measures the knowledge and skills it is intended to measure, and there is documentation to prove that claim, then we say we have content-related evidence of validity. Validity refers to the soundness and defensibility of the pass/fail decisions that are made by the test. Appropriate pass/fail standard Any pass/fail test must define a minimum level of knowledge and skill necessary to be qualified to pass. This level of ability is the conceptual pass/fail standard. This standard usually takes the form of a set of bullet points describing the abilities of a minimally qualified, or borderline-qualified candidate. Once the borderline qualified candidate has been defined, it is the job of the test developer and test sponsor to determine the score on the test that best represents that borderline level of ability. This minimum score needed to pass is called the cut score. There is no one true or right cut score. Rather, there is a region of the score scale, identified with the help of the test developer and additional subject matter experts, which is an appropriate region for setting the cut point. Choosing the exact cut score is a policy decision of the test sponsor, made on the basis of information supplied by the test developer. The goal of standard setting is to adequately portray the borderline-qualified candidate and to pick a score that represents how typical borderline-qualified candidates will do on the test. That score may be low, medium, or high depending on the how ambitious the conceptual standard is and how hard the test is. The score must not be so low that too many unqualified people will pass, nor can it be so high as to exclude too many qualified people. A principled and well-executed cut score setting process is important evidence of valid pass/fail decisions. Reliability In order to make valid decisions, a test must be reliable or consistent. There are different kinds of reliability, and each requires a different kind of proof. For example, in order to claim that a given test form scores candidates with a given level of precision, we must figure out how much of the variation in scores is due to differences in true ability, and how much is due to measurement error. The most important kind of reliability for a certification test is the consistency with which it makes pass/fail decisions. For example, if two parallel forms of the test are created and administered to the same candidates, we would expect the same candidates to be passed or failed by either test. This is called pass/fail classification consistency and is often reported in terms of the proportion of consistent pass/fail decisions made by two forms of the test. Test reliability does not ensure validity. However, a less-reliable test will, by definition, fail more people who should pass and pass more people who should fail than a more-reliable test.Thus reliability influences validity. Fairness Finally, a test should be fair to candidates.Often fairness is referred to in terms of lack of apparent or measured bias against one gender or ethnic group. We are often interested in other groups as well, such as geographic groups, language groups, or practitioners who use one platform or another, or who work in one business setting or another. The goal of testing is to make decisions based only on the ability being measured; the one stated in the test definition and advertised in the test specifications. There are statistical measures that can be used after the fact to detect potential bias against one group or another. More important are efforts during test design and item development to define specifications that are appropriate for the entire audience and to write items that are congruent with those specifications. Likewise, when alternative test forms are constructed every effort is made to assure that the forms are equally difficult, equally reliable, have equivalent cut scores, and have equivalent content coverage. Psychometrics is a science that deals with planning methods of research and analyzing the results to quantify and appraise human competence and abilities. Psychometricians are experts in assessing and evaluating an individual's strengths, weaknesses and competencies. They are trained in the science of building tests to assess human traits, including those which measure competence in a given profession. When psychometric principles are applied by a psychometrician to develop an exam it signifies the difference between a test that is merely a bunch of questions about a given topic and a tool that accurately measures and documents knowledge and skill levels related to the test domains. In certification exam development, a psychometrician uses scientific methodology to ensure that the four categories of valid test development (validity, reliability, cut score, and fairness) are appropriately adhered to. Correctly applied psychometrics provides precise measures of the test-taker's competency in a given area. The psychometrician also uses scientific reasoning to determine scoring procedures, passing score levels, and equivalence among multiple versions of one test. The use of psychometrics in exam development for the health industry should be obvious due to the high-stakes nature of the field. All stakeholders including test candidates, the facility owners and managers where they will be employed, as well as the public consumer they will serve need assurance that the credential they earn represents qualification and competence in their area of expertise. Due to the elevated possibility for legal challenge administering organizations must be vigilant in their commitment to developing a high-quality, legally defensible exam. |
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