Business Reasoning Test Scale Descriptions, Business Critical Thinking Skills Test Scale Descriptions, BCTST, BRT

The Total Score is the most valid global measure of overall strength in the core critical thinking skills used in problem solving and reflective decision making. To achieve a strong total score a person must excel in the overall integration of core critical thinking and reasoning skills and have no major weaknesses. The Total Score provides a valuable predictor of the capacity to be successful in educational and workplace contexts.

Delphi Study Scales and Traditional Scales

The scales named "analysis and interpretation," "inference," and "evaluation and explanation" correspond to the definitions of these thinking skills as they were described in the APA Delphi research study and independently validated by employers, educators and community agency leaders in the Penn State study on critical thinking.

Analysis & Interpretation Scale: Analytical and interpretive skills are used to closely examine ideas, to identify assumptions, reasons and claims, and to gather detailed information from charts, graphs, diagrams, paragraphs, etc. These skills are also used when determining the precise meaning of a sentence, passage, text, idea, assertion, sign, signal, chart, etc. in a given context and for a given purpose. Good interpretation often involves properly categorizing information, decoding the significance of what a person is saying and clarifying what something means. It would be unwise to build further judgments, such as inferences and evaluations, upon the results of a poor analysis or a mistaken interpretation.

Inference Scale: Inference skills are used when drawing conclusions based on reasons and evidence. Inferences can be skillfully drawn from a wide variety of things including information, data, beliefs, opinions, facts, conjectures, definitions, principles, images, signs, behaviors, documents, or testimony. However, skillful inference does not guarantee that the conclusion will be true. Conclusions inferred on the basis of misunderstandings, mistaken beliefs, bad data, unreliable opinions, biased evaluations, or faulty information, for example, can turn out to be mistaken, even if reached using excellent inference skills.

Evaluation & Explanation Scale: Evaluation and explanation skills are used to assess the credibility of claims and the strength or weakness of arguments. Evaluation skills can also be applied to form judgments about the quality of inferences, analyses, interpretations, options, opinions, beliefs, ideas, proposals, beliefs and justifications. Explanation involves providing one's reasons, methods, assumptions or rationale for one's beliefs and conclusions. Reaching a correct conclusion is not sufficient for strong critical thinking; strong critical thinking involves reaching a correct conclusion for a good reason, not by luck or on the basis of weak arguments and mistaken opinions.

Together, these three scales form a full representation of the core critical thinking skills identified in the Delphi Report, understanding, of course, that meta-cognitive self-regulation, while being exercised as one takes the BRT or the BCTST, cannot be readily accessed apart from the operation of the other skills.

The two other scales on the BCTST and the BRT follow the traditional conceptualization of reasoning which divides the realm into inductive and deductive reasoning.

Deductive Reasoning Scale: Deductive reasoning moves from the assumed truth of a set of beliefs or premises to a conclusion which follows of necessity. In a valid deductive argument the conclusion cannot possibly be false if the premises are all true. Geometry, algebra, and many computer programs are deductive chains of reasoning, as are Sudoku puzzles. Activities which require following rules, definitions, laws or diagrams with exacting precision call on deductive reasoning skills. Identifying a specific instance of a generalization or drawing inferences based on the principles of transitivity, reflexivity and identity are deductive in character.

Inductive Reasoning Scale: Inference skills are used when drawing conclusions based on reasons and evidence. Inferences can be skillfully drawn from a wide variety of things including information, data, beliefs, opinions, facts, conjectures, definitions, principles, images, signs, behaviors, documents, or testimony. However, skillful inference does not guarantee that the conclusion will be true. Conclusions inferred on the basis of misunderstandings, mistaken beliefs, bad data, unreliable opinions, biased evaluations, or faulty information, for example, can turn out to be mistaken, even if reached using excellent inference skills. Statistical inferences are examples of inductive reasoning as are the day to day inferences we make in familiar situations about what things are most likely to occur.

The words "inductive" and "deductive" have become notoriously ambiguous as a result of their divergent uses in different disciplines. Concern about this ambiguity explains why the words "deduction" and "induction" appear nowhere in the items of the BRT or BCTST. In view of the continued common reference to this distinction, however, these tests offer these final two scales.

The book, Thinking and Reasoning in Human Decision Making, explores the relationship between critical thinking, expertise, and decision making in time-limited contexts of uncertainty and risk.

To learn more about critical thinking and reasoning skills and dispositions download free "Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts."

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