Abstract
BackgroundThis study aimed to develop and conduct psychometric testing of the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory to measure the critical thinking disposition of Chinese medical college students.MethodsThe study was conducted in two stages: (a) item generation, reliability analysis and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and (b) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and testing of psychometric properties (Cronbach’ s alpha, test-retest reliability and convergent validity). The subjects included 1035 Chinese medical college students. The test-retest reliability of the instrument was determined at a two-week interval (n = 61). A general linear regression model was developed to examine the predictive effects of gender, age and major on CT disposition. The data were analysed with SPSS 22.0 and Amos 21.0 during item development and the reliability and validity analyses. Vista was utilized for parallel analysis during the principal axis analysis.ResultsEighteen final items were sorted into 3 factors, which were identified as “Open-mindedness”, “Systematicity/Analyticity” and “Truth-seeking”, with cumulative variance of 41.37, 46.00 and 49.59%, respectively. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.924, and the factors’ alphas ranged from 0.824 to 0.862. The correlational analysis indicated significant correlations between the subscales of the CTDI-CM and the total scores of the CTDI-CV, indicating modest evidence for the convergent validity of the CTDI-CM. Gender, age and education significantly predicted the CT disposition of Chinese medical students. Open-mindedness and Systematicity/Analyticity were higher for medical students than for nursing students.ConclusionsThis study presents a reliable and valid instrument for clinical thinking disposition. Future studies should explore other predictive factors of CT dispositions (e.g., cognitive/motivational) and criterion validity.
Highlights
This study aimed to develop and conduct psychometric testing of the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory to measure the critical thinking disposition of Chinese medical college students
Item analyses showed that the items of the CTDI-M were recognized by the respondents as relevant to Critical thinking (CT) disposition
Three factors were extracted through parallel analysis after comparison of the actual data eigenvalues with the eigenvalues
Summary
This study aimed to develop and conduct psychometric testing of the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory to measure the critical thinking disposition of Chinese medical college students. The importance of being ‘critical’ for medical students and practitioners has been increasingly emphasized [1]. Dispositions towards critical thinking are vital to critical-thinking performance [7] and professional clinical judgement [8]. Wang et al BMC Medical Education (2019) 19:200 ability are necessary for critical thinking [9]. The assessment of CT dispositions may help to identify targets to promote critical thinking through training programmes in both professional and educational contexts
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