Critical thinking of psychology students: A within‐ and cross‐cultural study using Rasch models

Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to conduct a cross‐cultural comparison of the level of critical thinking of Danish and Spanish psychology students (N = 788) attending innately different bachelor‐level courses; personality psychology and introductory statistics/research methods. Several instruments are available for the assessment of critical thinking (CTh), but most are, however, unsuitable for use in large surveys with many constructs, due to length or single‐person administration formats. One brief and much‐used scale is the CTh scale in the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), used in this study. To ensure unbiased comparisons across countries and courses, our secondary aim was to investigate the content validity, as well as the psychometric properties, of the CTh scale to ensure the most accurate and unbiased comparison. For this purpose, Rasch and graphical loglinear Rasch models were used. After reducing the number of items due to content validity issues, the CTh scale fitted Rasch models within each national sample, and was measurement invariant relative to age group, gender, course and university. In the cross‐cultural item analysis, two items functioned differentially relative to nationality, and the scale fitted a graphical loglinear Rasch model. CTh scores related to introductory statistics/research methods courses differed significantly from scores related to personality psychology, for Danish students only.

Exploring First Semester Changes in Domain-Specific Critical Thinking

“…The secondary aim is to investigate further the psychometric properties of the brief version of the Motivated Strategies of Learning Questionnaire critical thinking scale (MSLQ; Pintrich et al, 1991) resulting from a recent validation study, which critically considered the content and construct validity of this scale as well as its cross-cultural validity (Nielsen et al, 2021). As this brief critical thinking scale (CTh) was shown to fit the Rasch model both with a Danish and a Spanish sample of psychology students and have reliability for the Danish sample at the level of those obtained with the original scale, we found the CTh scale to be a good candidate for the current study.…”

“…The Critical Thinking scale (CTh) employed in the present study is a brief version of the critical thinking scale from the Motivated Strategies of Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich et al, 1991) resulting from a recent validation study, which critically considered the content and construct validity of this scale as well as its cross-cultural validity (Nielsen et al, 2021). The MSLQ is a multi-scale questionnaire intended to measure aspects of students' motivational orientation and learning strategies in high school and higher education (Pintrich et al, 1991).…”

“…In their study of the cross-cultural validity of the critical thinking scale from the MSLQ, Nielsen et al (2021) analyzed thoroughly the content validity of the scale and found that only three items actually measured critical thinking.…”

Rasch model item response theory (IRT) to analyze the quality of mathematics final semester exam test on system of linear equations in two variables (SLETV)

“…Research on the Rasch model has been widely discussed (Chan et al, 2021;Che Lah et al, 2021;Nielsen et al, 2021;Scoulas et al, 2021;Tseng & Wang, 2021). Previous findings show that the Rasch model can be used by teachers and can be applied in final semester exams in various subjects: Chemistry (Purnamasari & Kartowagiran, 2019), Economics (Alfarisa & Purnama, 2019), Morality (Aqidah-Akhlak) (Pratama, 2020), and Physics (Asriadi & Hadi, 2021;Palimbong et al, 2018).…”

Implementation of Item Response Theory (IRT) Rasch Model in Quality Analysis of Final Exam Tests in Mathematics

“…One of the simplest IRT models that has been widely used by experts in developing tests is the Rasch model, with one parameter (1-PL) (Chan et al, 2021;Falani & Kumala, 2017;Sumaryanto & Khumaedi, 2019). Rasch model is very easy to do and apply with accurate analysis results (Che Lah et al, 2021;Susdelina et al, 2018), also reviewing the opportunity to answer correctly on the questions by comparing students' abilities with the level of difficulty of the questions (Nielsen et al, 2021;Sumintono & Widhiarso, 2015). The Rasch model has a variable difficulty level, regardless of the sample involved in the initial variation (Scoulas et al, 2021;Wei et al, 2012).…”