Developing the California test for Critical Thinking skills among university students According to Latent Traits Theory

Abstract

The Present Study aims at developing The California Critical Thinking Skills Test for University Students According to the Latent Traits Theory. To achieve this aim, Scientific Steps are followed starting with the Translating the Items and its Instructions from English into Arabic, then re-translate the Arabic version into English, taking into consideration the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the whole ideas included in the test. Several modifications are required by translation experts who were considered later. Then the Arabic version of the test is exposed on an Arabic Language expert who recommended certain modification in the style of the Arabic translation, then were all taken into account.

   The test has been applied on a stratified random sample of (500) male and female university students. Rasch's unit- dimension model, which is one of the Latent Traits Theory models, is applied for item analysis. To verify model's assumptions, the following steps have been: 1. uni-dimensional: In order to verify this assumption, factor analysis is done by using (the Principal components Method). Accordingly, One factor has been meaningful to the test. The same factor depended on the lower limits of Guttman who believes that a factor is considered statistically significant when the (Eigen value) equals or more than (1), and depending on a ratio of (0.30 – up) . 2. Matching the items of the model depending on the (Chi² value) according to the outputs of the program. This Procedure shows that four Items are statistically significant on a level of significance of (0.05). Therefore, (18) individuals of the sample of the statistical analysis were eliminated who have unmatched responses with the model's assumptions. 3. The discrimination coefficient value is found out to be near (1), where the exact value is found out to be (1. 03). 4. The independence of the scale to achieve objectivity of measurement is represented by Rasch's model, consequently, no items have been removed.5. In order to get rid of fractions and negative signals (i.e. minus), the logged unit is changed into the percentile WAT unit to find out the items difficulty and the individual's ability estimation.    In the light of the statistical analysis above, suitable conclusions, recommendations, and suggestions for further studies have been put forward.