The Patient Advocate Certification Board’s 2020-2021 Job Analysis Study

Survey Explanation and Instructions

The Patient Advocate Certification Board is an organization with the mission to ‘manage and maintain a universally recognized certification for patient/health advocates; establish and maintain relevant knowledge domains, skills, ethical standards and best practices for advocates; collaborate with healthcare consumers to achieve patient and family centered care; establish professional development for certified advocates; and promote and professionalize patient advocacy.’  We are currently conducting a job task analysis study to obtain descriptive information about the tasks performed by patient advocates and the knowledge needed to competently perform those tasks.

Since all jobs and professions tend to develop and change over time, all professional organizations supporting specific professions or industries must regularly seek to define roles and functions of their representative professions using the evidence-based literature as well as knowledge from those in practice to identify what the current roles and functions are and then give guidance to the construction or revision of the Body of Knowledge. In fact, the establishment of a valid job analysis is essential to the integrity of a credentialing program and its associated exam. The job analysis translates the knowledge, skills, and abilities of career practice into a usable format for test development and delineates the important tasks and knowledge deemed necessary for competent practice. In other words, a job analysis helps ensure that a certification exam is both job related and has content validity. The JTA is the tool that links the content of the certification exam to field-identified important job tasks and is an essential component in establishing the content validity of a credentialing exam. (Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, 2014).

The purpose of the PACB 2020-2021 Job Analysis Study is to identify and validate tasks and knowledge important in the work performed by Patient Advocates. The results of the study will be utilized to create test specifications that will guide the development of new versions of the BCPA exam. The study results will also serve as a framework for PACB regarding content selection of continuing education for re-certification. Details about the JTA Process can be found after the instructions for taking the survey if you are interested in learning more about the process involved in creating this survey and how the results will be used by PACB and by the Patient Advocacy industry.

Instructions for Completing the Job Task Analysis Questionnaire

1. This questionnaire should be completed on a Desktop or Laptop COMPUTER and should not be completed using a smart phone or tablet device.
2. The questionnaire will take roughly one hour to complete.
3. The survey asks for an email address only for the purpose of eliminating duplicate or incomplete entries.
4. Data collected from the questionnaire will be held in strict confidence and only reported in aggregate.
5. You may leave the questionnaire and come back to complete it at a different time. HOWEVER, because of the anonymous nature of the questionnaire, the only way that you can exit the survey and come back to continue where you left off is if you are using the SAME COMPUTER and the SAME BROWSER and if your cookies are enabled.  The anonymous link to the questionnaire is only traceable via cookies on your machine.  If you are using anonymous browsing or have cookies disabled on your browser, then you must complete the survey in one session once you have started.

If you know other individuals who are patient advocates, we would like for you to forward the questionnaire on to them using the link below so that they, too, can complete the survey.  Our goal is to have as many advocates as possible complete the survey by the February 28, 2021 deadline.

Because the questionnaire is being distributed through various patient advocacy organizations such as PACB, NAHAC, APHA, HealthAdvocateX, GNA, and others, you may receive more than one invitation to complete the survey, especially if you are a member of more than one of these organizations. Additionally, you may receive a link to complete the survey from another advocate who forwards the link to you as part of the process to have as many advocates as possible complete the survey.  You only need to complete the survey ONCE.  If you receive multiple requests to complete the questionnaire, you only need to do the survey one time.  You may ignore all other requests.

Job Task Analysis Survey Link: http://onu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eDQW2neXGveKQeN