The Assessment of Critical Thinking Critically Assessed in Higher Education: A Validation Study of the CCTT and the HCTA

Although critical thinking (CT) is generally acknowledged as an important aim of higher education, no validated instrument to assess CT in Dutch is available. Moreover, most instruments are validated on a broad sample with people of diverse educational backgrounds. This possibly hampers the reliability of assessing effects of instructional interventions within educational programmes, where diversity is less. This study investigates the psychometric quality of a translation of the Cornell Critical Thinking Test (CCTT) and the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment (HCTA) in a sample of Dutch speaking freshmen majoring in educational sciences. Results show a higher content validity and preference by students for the HCTA. The CCTT, however, takes less time to administer and score, which makes it easier to use the CCTT on a larger scale. Neither of the two tests shows a high overall reliability. The strength of the correlations between the constructed-response items and the forced-choice items of the HCTA with the CCTT calls for further research on the precise relation between CT skills and dispositions and the ability of the HCTA to assess both independently