Lead: ALPS Baseline and Outlines Research Group (BORG)
Email: v.c.t.joynes@leeds.ac.uk

The ALPS Competency in Practice Assessment (CIPA) project is a large scale piece of research in to the perceived confidence and competence of graduates to practice.  Piloted in 2008, it is a longitudinal data collection tool which asks students to rate their competence and confidence to practice at point of graduation, 6 months, and 12 months post graduation.  Starting in January 2009, CIPA is now sent out to all graduating cohorts involved in the ALPS programme.  The ALPS CIPA data collection has been carried out online, although a paper version of the tool is available here.

Professor Ieuan Ellis, chair of the BORG says:
'The ability to demonstrate that new graduate professionals are competent and confident at the point of qualification and initial professional registration remains a significant challenge to those of us involved in education and training. In spite of overwhelmingly positive outcomes and reports of recent QAA and NHS Major Reviews and generally positive reports from ongoing professional and regulatory body programme approval, monitoring and review processes, there remain sporadic outbursts of anecdotal evidence of employer dissatisfaction with the competency of new graduate health and social care professionals.  

One of the key aims of ALPS is to improve the assessment of competence in practice across 16 professions, increasing the confidence of new graduates and their employers. The CIPA tool has been developed to establish measures of new graduate confidence in their ability across a number of areas of professional competence. Initially it is being piloted as a self-rating tool with new graduates with the intention of extending its use by employers of new graduates. The tool offers a way of establishing some baseline measures of confidence and competence where these do not currently exist. It will also enable comparison of confidence and competence levels in and between different professions. If used for repeated measures it also has the potential to measure changing levels of confidence and competence during career development.'