Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Introduction The TVET sector is crucial for socioeconomic development, bridging skills gaps and meeting industry demands for skilled workers. Yet, developing countries like Nepal face challenges such as declining enrollment, low stakeholder trust, and quality issues, despite growing labor market needs. A major problem is the absence of a standardised, verifiable Quality Assurance and Accreditation framework that objectively evaluates institutional performance and promotes quality enhancement. While Nepal approved the QAA Bylaw (2025) with 73 indicators, the lack of measurable subindicators leads to concerns about subjective and inconsistent assessments. This study aimed to operationalize the 73 indicators by developing and initially validating 300 sub-indicators to ensure the QAA anticipations are clear and measurable for TVET institutions. Methods A modified Delphi method was used, comprising multiple stages: an exploratory expert consultation; an in-depth literature review; a workshop with a broader group of TVET stakeholders; two rounds of expert surveys with 10 purposively selected TVET professionals; and preliminary field testing at 2 institutions. Results Results showed strong content validity (SCVI/Ave = 0.91-0.97), and initial scoring consistency measured by the percentage agreement among independent rater teams during field testing yielded a weighted agreement of 82% to 97% across seven criteria. Discussion These findings provide initial evidence of the instrument's content validity and rater-consistency in scoring. While recognizing the study's limitations of relying on expert consensus and small-scale testing, the tool should thus be considered as a context-specific, developmental resource that can be further validated on larger and more diverse institutional samples. Importantly, the results show that participatory, evidence-based methods can help adapt international standards to local contexts, and the approach provides a potentially replicable model for other developing economies aiming to quantify policy frameworks, such as the QAA framework, into measurable tools.
Neupane et al. (Fri,) studied this question.