Predicting Everyday Critical Thinking: A Review of Critical Thinking Assessments.

Our ability to think critically and our disposition to do so can have major implications for our everyday lives. Research across the globe has shown the impact of critical thinking on decisions about our health, politics, relationships, finances, consumer purchases, education, work, and more. This chapter will review some of that research. Given the importance of critical thinking to our everyday lives, the fair and unbiased assessment of critical thinking is useful for guiding educators in their classrooms, for the sake of self-improvement, and in employment decisions. This chapter will also review the psychometric properties of several critical thinking assessments, with a special emphasis on the everyday behaviors predicted by these assessments. The practical challenges faced by test adopters and future directions in the assessment of critical thinking will be discussed.

Assessment of Undergraduates' Real-World Outcomes of Critical Thinking in Everyday Situations.

Critical thinking is a kind of "good" thinking that integrates a set of cognitive skills and dispositions to use those skills with knowledge to increase the chances of success in academic settings, job market, and daily life. The impact of critical thinking on life events, in face of everyday decisions and challenges, is still unclear, and further research is needed. In this exploratory study, a sample of 230 first-year students of a Bachelor's Degree or a Master's Degree in Portugal completed an experimental Portuguese version of the Real-World Outcomes, a self-report inventory measuring everyday negative life events that are mediated by a lack of critical thinking. Based on exploratory factor analysis results and theoretical premises, changes were made to the Portuguese version of the inventory that was administered, and items were aggregated into six dimensions, creating a new version that is more familiar to Portuguese young adults in college. This original proposal of the inventory presents six types of negative life events resulting from a lack of critical thinking: health neglect, mismanagement, slackness, poor impulse control, academic negligence, and rashness. Both limitations and future potentialities of this version are presented.

Social norms information enhances the efficacy of an appearance-based sun protection intervention.

This experiment examined whether the efficacy of an appearance-based sun protection intervention could be enhanced by the addition of social norms information. Southern California college students (N=125, predominantly female) were randomly assigned to either an appearance-based sun protection intervention that consisted of a photograph depicting underlying sun damage to their skin (UV photo) and information about photoaging or to a control condition. Those assigned to the intervention were further randomized to receive information about what one should do to prevent photoaging (injunctive norms information), information about the number of their peers who currently use regular sun protection (descriptive norms information), both injunctive and descriptive norms information, or neither type of norms information. The results demonstrated that those who received the UV photo/photoaging information intervention expressed greater sun protection intentions and subsequently reported greater sun protection behaviors than did controls. Further, the addition of both injunctive and descriptive norms information increased self-reported sun protection behaviors during the subsequent month.

Measuring diabetes self-care: a psychometric analysis of the Self-Care Inventory-Revised with adults.

OBJECTIVE: To examine psychometric properties of the Self-Care Inventory-revised (SCI-R), a self-report measure of perceived adherence to diabetes self-care recommendations, among adults with diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We used three data sets of adult type 1 and type 2 diabetic patients to examine psychometric properties of the SCI-R. Principal component and factor analyses examined whether a general factor or common factors were present. Associations with measures of theoretically related concepts were examined to assess SCI-R concurrent and convergent validity. Internal reliability coefficients were calculated. Responsiveness was assessed using paired t tests, effect size, and Guyatt's statistic for type 1 patients who completed psychoeducation. RESULTS: Principal component and factor analyses identified a general factor but no consistent common factors. Internal consistency of the SCI-R was alpha = 0.87. Correlation with a measure of frequency of diabetes self-care behaviors was r = 0.63, providing evidence for SCI-R concurrent validity. The SCI-R correlated with diabetes-related distress (r = -0.36), self-esteem (r = 0.25), self-efficacy (r = 0.47), depression (r = -0.22), anxiety (r = -0.24), and HbA(1c) (r = -0.37), supporting construct validity. Responsiveness analyses showed SCI-R scores improved with diabetes psychoeducation with a medium effect size of 0.62 and a Guyatt's statistic of 0.85. CONCLUSIONS: The SCI-R is a brief, psychometrically sound measure of perceptions of adherence to recommended diabetes self-care behaviors of adults with type 1 or type 2 diabetes.