Critical Thinking Dispositions: Development and Validation of an Assessment Tool

Abstract

The article describes the process of developing and testing the “Critical Thinking Dispositions” (CDT) tool. Critical thinking dispositions refer to a person's predispositions, tendencies, or readiness to implement critical thinking skills. The relevance of studying and measuring CDT is reflected in the relationship of the construct with the psychological characteristics of a person and his success in various fields. Also, dispositions are important for the manifestation of critical thinking skills: a person with low dispositions may not demonstrate critical thinking, even if it is expressed at a high level. Currently, there is a lack of validated Russian-language instruments dedicated to CDT. The purpose of the study was to develop a CDT instrument and test its validity. Descriptions of the construct in the research literature, analysis of existing theoretical frameworks, and tools for measuring critical thinking dispositions are provided. The instrument is a self-report questionnaire in computer format. The respondent’s task is to assess how similar his behavior in everyday life is to that described in the statements. The questionnaire was tested, based on the data obtained, the factor structure and the quality of the developed tasks were checked, and convergent and content validity was assessed. The results of psychometric testing suggest that the developed instrument is a reliable and valid way to assess critical thinking dispositions in Russian-speaking people over 16 years of age. Limitations of this study and possible directions for future developments are discussed.

Keywords

• critical thinking dispositions
• dispositions
• inclinations
• development of a measurement instrument
• validation
• psychometrics
• questionnaire
• test