Where it all began
The UF Critical Thinking Inventory is a rigorously tested, academically sound and reliable critical thinking assessment tool.
This instrument measures how people think critically about their toughest decisions. Co-creators Tracy Irani and Alexa Lamm spent years developing and testing the UFCTI and are excited to share it with a global audience. Irani is the department chair of the UF/IFAS Family, Youth and Community Sciences Department, while Lamm is the associate director of the UF/IFAS Center for Public Issues Education.
The UFCTI measures critical thinking style — rather than critical thinking skills — on a continuum between engagement and seeking information. Styles are not indicative of high or low levels of critical thinking but rather the way people think.
Extensive work was involved in the creation of the UFCTI tool, including administering the instrument with various populations, such as students, the general public and business professionals, to ensure it will work in multiple settings. Initially, Lamm administered the UFCTI to approximately 5,000 students in large lecture classes at the University of Florida over a four-year period to measure the instrument’s accuracy and reliability. Lamm then used the UFCTI with Extension professionals and members of the general public to further validate the scale.
Lamm performed a variety of statistical analyses on individual questions and constructs in order to determine how they fit together. Irrelevant items were eliminated for validity and succinctness. Lamm implemented exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to look at how people answered various questions and how strongly they correlated to one another. Identifying different angles of the same concept allows for the creation of a valid scale, according to Lamm, and altering certain words changes how people perceive and answer questions.
“When you measure cognitive tendencies, you want to get the smallest amount of items on the instrument that can measure something accurately,” Lamm said. “Now we include it in the public opinion surveys, and it’s actually been even more reliable on the general public than it was on specialized groups,” Lamm said.
In order to use the UFCTI instrument, the administrator must be certified. A three-lesson online program will teach learners about critical thinking, the UFCTI, and how to interpret the results. The lessons are self-paced and include brief lectures and activities. Quisto Settle, a post-doctoral associate at the PIE Center, and UF Distance and Continuing Education created the online training program.
After successfully completing certification, the instrument can be administered by purchasing codes that provide individual access. Codes can be purchased for groups with a minimum of 10 people. The instrument is administered online so there is no delay in receiving results.
“The program is truly engaging and gives people information in a way that is far more interactive and beneficial beyond what they might get reading from a book or traveling somewhere to take the training in person,” Irani said.