validity evaluating of midwifery special courses in isfahan medical university

background : the aim of training midwifery student is to increasing scientific and practical abilities in trainees in order to present caring health services and so the evaluation tools of these abilities has a great importance. for evaluating considered tools and for the reason of midwifery theoretical special courses importance this study tries to evaluate content validity, criterion validity and base validity of academic exams. methods : this crossectional research is evaluated type that has been done on 18 special theoretical courses of midwifery in 2 semesters in 2007-2008. the data gathered by checklists. the data about questionnaire and the result of analyzing exam questions (final and midterm) have been compiled by 2 educating experts of medical education and 2 experts for each course. the data analyzed by spss software. for determining base validity spearman correlation test and for presenting descriptive results distribution tables applied. results : the evaluation of 1013 questions showed that (in 18 courses) %61.18 of exams more than %90 of questions had content validity and in /%28.27 of exams more than %90 of criterion validity had been considered. the results show that in %92.38 of questions content validity and in %80.45 of questions criterion validity has been reported. 11 courses out of 11 courses (18) have base validity. conclusions : these survey shows that content validity of the exam questions in midwifery special theoretical courses are about favorable evaluate their considered content. but the criterion  validity of exams questions have been far away from ideal level so it seems that education in each session can help the teachers leading them to achieve their exam purposes. key words : content validity, criterion validity, midwifery special exams. reliability.