Evaluation as a means of quality assurance in child and adolescent psychiatry programs

The shortage of budgetary means, structural problems in university education as well as the public discussion of the quality of lectures in universities suggest to survey the mentioned on the basis of scientific evaluation methods. Therefore, it was exemplarily researched in the university's child and adolescent psychiatric clinic which level of quality the education actually has, which items prove to be essential for a positive overall rating and which consequences result regarding further measures for quality control. All the department's educational activities during one term were documented by means of predominantly standardized questionnaires on structure, content, lecturers and overall rating for both students and lecturers. The chosen approach proves to be suitable to receive data on quality from the student's as well as the lecturer's point of view. The courses were rated relatively well in all dimensions, possibilities of improvement could be identified. Remarkable is the high accordance of average mean ratings among lecturers and students. The systematic evaluation of educational activities takes the importance of university education into consideration and helps to advance and optimize it.