Development and validation of Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory for Chinese medical college students (CTDI-M)

PURPOSE: Critical thinkers in medical context must be not only "able" but also "willing" to think critically. To develop and conduct psychometric testing of Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory which measure the critical thinking disposition of Chinese medical college students. METHODS: The study was conducted in two stages: (a) item generation and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and (b) testing of psychometric properties (construct validity, split-half reliability and Cronbach's alpha, and test-retest reliability. The subjects were composed of 441 undergraduate medical and nursing students from a medical university in China. Test-retest reliability of the instrument was determined at two-week interval. Data was analyzed with SPSS13.0. RESULTS: Preliminary 264 items were obtained using an open-ended questionnaire; from which 61 items were reviewed through half open-ended questionnaire, and finally 18 items were chosen. Eighteen final items were sorted into 3 factors, which were identified as "Open-mindedness ", "Systematicity/analyticity" and "Truth seeking". The cumulative percent of variance was 57.66%. The Cronbach's alpha was 0.924 and the factors' alphas ranged from 0.824-0.862. Correlational analysis indicated moderate to high correlations between the subscales and total scores of the CTDI-CM. Our results indicated that open-mindedness and systematicity/analyticity were higher for medical students than nursing students. CONCLUSIONS: This study conducted in a Chinese medical college student population demonstrated a reliable and valid instrument for clinical thinking disposition, which measured motivation and cognitive components. The effect of enrollment year and major on the profiles of critical thinking dispositions was identified, emphasizing the importance of applying specialized teaching to students of different majors.