How do the different members of the CCTST family differ?

The California Critical Thinking Skills Test, CCTST, has been a premier instrument for measuring critical thinking skills for more 30 years. The CCTST measures essential reasoning and decision making processes.

Measures of reasoning skill and mindset must be calibrated to the developmental level of the individual and the level of decision responsibility that will be expected of the employee or training program graduate. Each member of the CCTST family of critical thinking skills tests is calibrated for a specific set of intended test takers. Education, reading level and experience are among the considerations when crafting relevant and engaging items.

The CCTST is a discipline neutral measure of reasoning skills a calibrated for Undergraduate and Graduate level students or comparable population groups.
The CCT-G835 is calibrated to differentiate well in groups of doctoral level students and working professionals who have very strong educational preparation
The EDUCATE INSIGHT Reasoning Skills series measures critical thinking skills plus numeracy in children and students in grades K-12.

In all of the California family of critical thinking skills tests, test takers are challenged to form reasoned judgments based on a short scenario presented in the question stem. The CCTST does NOT test any content area knowledge. CCTST questions are framed in the context of everyday concerns. All necessary information needed to answer the question correctly is presented in the question stem

There are varying numbers of items on different tests within the CCTST family of reasoning skills tests, but in each case the length of the instrument and the time limit for test administration purposes are set to permit maximum performance within the range of possible effort for the intended test taker group.

Items contained in the CCTST are tested for their ability to differentiate well between individuals when the items are taken as a group. The items use everyday scenarios, appropriate to the intended test taker group. The response frame is in multiple choice format. Any specialized information needed to respond correctly is provided in the question itself.

All forms of the CCTST provide an Overall score that is the best overall measure of an individual’s critical thinking skills, specific skills scores, and when applicable, a comparison percentile to allow administrators to compare their sample’s scores with an external criterion. Overall score and scale scores are qualitatively interpretable in terms of performance.

Additional test instruments

All Insight Assessment reasoning skills test instruments are based on the APA Delphi Consensus Definition of Critical Thinking, an interdisciplinary consensus that has been embraced worldwide as characterizing what is meant by the term ‘critical thinking.’ The item pool that supports these instruments has been refined through a continuing series of instrument development projects at varying educational levels, across varying disciplines, and in various languages, resulting in an array of critical thinking assessment instruments designed to validly and reliably assess candidates, trainees, students, and working professionals.

Context matters. We have learned that students in engage tests more readily because they value learning that they see as relevant to their careers. While the CCTST has item scenarios set in everyday situations; the HSRT, for example, employs item stems which are designed using the context of the health sciences. However, no health science knowledge is required of test takers, so the instruments can be used with entering students as well. Associated instruments include:

Additional information is included in the products pages for each assessment.

How to optimize your thinking data before the testing starts

How are Insight Assessment test instruments validated?