Developing and validating a scale to assess students’ expertise in online strategies for consecutive interpreting

Apart from traditional approaches such as retrospective interviews on interpreting outputs to assess students’ mastery of online strategies (i.e. strategies adopted during interpreting), a validated tool that can efficiently assess such expertise is at least a helpful supplement. Following psychometric principles and informed by a focus group, an expert panel, and data from more than 200 Chinese-English interpreting students in pilot and formal tests, this study developed and validated a self-rating expertise scale for typical online strategies used during consecutive interpreting (CI). The final 20-item scale (phrased in Chinese) evaluates such expertise respectively for the CI comprehension and production phases. For comprehension, exploratory factor analysis revealed two dimensions: utilizing global context and utilizing local context. For production, three dimensions emerged: (1) utilizing what is available so as to reformulate efficiently, (2) prioritizing, and sacrificing what is less important, and (3) elaborating when necessary. The scale has sufficient internal consistency (ordinal α = 0.89), test-retest reliability (r = 0.80), content validity (established by rigorous development and confirmed by expert rating), and criterion-related validity (with scale scores significantly correlating with interpreting performance measures, Spearman’s ρ = 0.52 and 0.61). The dimensions that emerged have implications for understanding expertise in CI online strategies.