A National Study on the Relationship Between Programmatic Factors and Athletic Training Education Board of Certification Pass Rates

Context In athletic training education, the first-time Board of Certification (BOC) pass rate is a significant marker of a program's success, and the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE) and requires programs to maintain a first-time 3-year aggregate BOC examination pass rate over 70% (Standard 11). Published research on BOC pass rates on professional master's (PM) programs is limited. Therefore, it is essential to identify modifiable factors that have a relationship with first-time pass rates. Objective The aim of this study aim was to investigate the relationships between programmatic factors and the first-time BOC pass rate for PM athletic training students while controlling for student and institutional factors. This study is necessary to fill the literature gap and identify PM programmatic factors that may be significant in predicting student success in PM athletic training programs. Design Cross-section study. Setting A multiple regression analysis of program-level data that captured student, programmatic, and institutional factors obtained from the deidentified CAATE data was conducted on 77 PM athletic training programs in the 2018–2019 reporting year. Main Outcome Measure(s) Independent variables included in the study were institutional type, admissions selectivity, cohort diversity, clinical immersion hours per week, students per core faculty member, students per lab faculty member, percent doctoral faculty, and total spending on professional development. The dependent variable was the programmatic 1-year, first-time BOC pass rate. Results A significant positive relationship was found between admissions selectivity, clinical immersion hours per week, percentage of doctoral faculty, and total amount spent on professional development and 1-year, first-time BOC program pass rates. These results suggest that increased programmatic investments into development of faculty and the evaluation of the clinical immersive experience may help programs increase their first-time BOC pass rate.