Development of the Groningen Psychological Critical Thinking Task

Jaarsveld, Leonie van (2022) Development of the Groningen Psychological Critical Thinking Task. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.

Text LPM_van_Jaarsveld_s3670740 (8).pdf Restricted to Repository staff only Download (456kB)

Abstract

Both the APA guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major (American Psychological Association [APA], 2013) and the final qualifications of the Psychology Bachelor students at the University of Groningen (RUG) (University of Groningen, 2021) mention critical thinking as an important learning goal. The only widely used assessment for measuring psychological critical thinking (PCT) is the PCTE (Lawson, 1999), but the field of psychology lacks an essay-like assessment. Aiming to develop a valid measure for assessing psychological critical thinking skills, we created the Groningen Psychological Critical Thinking Task (GPCTT). The assessment is based on the “messy” problem (Dibartolo et al., 2016) and measures task-takers’ skills in 5 aspects central to psychological critical thinking. A within-subject correlational study with a convenience sample of RUG bachelor students was conducted. A weak correlation (Botsch, 2011) between the GPCTT and the PCTE was found, implicating that the GPCTT does not accurately represent critical thinking, and thus is not fit for measuring psychological critical thinking. An unacceptable internal consistency of the GPCTT was found as well (George and Mallery, 2003). These results could be attributed to the vague instruction of the GPCTT and to the lack of a distributed sample of participants’ study years in psychology. Future research should gather a sample with a good distribution of study years in psychology students and should further clarify the instructions for the GPCTT. Keywords: psychological critical thinking, critical thinking assessment, bachelor students

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor)
Supervisor name:	Fratescu, M.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	Clinical Psychology (CP) [Bachelor Psychology]
Date Deposited:	08 Mar 2022 07:06
Last Modified:	25 Apr 2023 06:59
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/285

Actions (login required)

View Item