The California Critical Thinking Skills Test : College Level Technical Report # 1 - - Experimental Validation and Content Validity

Technical Report #1 presents the findings of four experiments to determine if the "California Critical Thinking Skills Test: College Level," (CCTST) measured the growth in critical thinking skills achieved by college students completing approved critical thinking courses. Conducted at California State University, Fullerton during the 1989/90 academic year, these four experiments involved 1169 college students, five courses, three departments, 20 instructors, and 45 sections. The theoretical construct grounding the CCTST is the consensus conceptualization of critical thinking articulated by the panel of 46 national experts who participated in a Delphi research project conducted during 1987-1989 for the American Philosophical Association. The CCTST targets five cognitive skills as defined in that Delphi research: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, explanation, and inference. The theoretical construct for the CCTST is directly compatible with the conceptualization of CT promulgated by the California State University System. The CCTST reports six scores: an overall score on CT cognitive skills and five sub-scores named analysis, evaluation, inference, deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. The first experiment compared the pretest and posttest means for two independent groups of CT students enrolled in 39 sections of four different campus approved CT courses. The CCTST succeeded in detecting the statistically significant growth in CT skills hypothesized to have resulted from CT instruction. As a control, the second experiment related CCTST score of two independent groups enrolled in six sections of introduction to philosophy. The null hypothesis was retained. In the third experiment, using paired pretest/posttest scores, the CCTST measured the growth in CT skills assumed to have occurred as a result of one semester of approved CT instruction. The fourth experiment retained the null hypothesis for the control group using paired pretest/posttest CCTST scores. Generalizing the results, with a confidence interval of 95%, the range of the mean improvement in the CCTST scores of college students completing approved lower division general education CT courses at public comprehensive universities will be bounded by +1.9071 and +.9861. Regression analyses and correlations with GPA, SAT scores, Nelson-Denny Reading Test scores, and other standard measures of academic preparation or ability are presented in Technical Report #2. That report also discusses instructorrelated factors, such as CT teaching experience, and the impact of English language ability on the CCTST. Technical Report #3 discusses student-related factors such as academic major, CT self-esteem, gender, and ethnicity. Technical Report #4 provides group norms for the CCTST overall score and for its five sub-scores.