Content validity refers to the ability of a test to capture a measure of the intended domain.
Identification of the pertinent domain, and obtaining agreement on it, are of primary importance to content validation. A second criterion of content validity is assuring that “sensible” methods of test construction are employed.The specified domain is critical thinking as defined by the Delphi group and subsequently endorse by populations globally. Critical thinking, as defined by the APA Delphi study, is a construct which integrates a number of cognitive maneuvers known to be a component of this type of human reasoning process. These maneuvers are included in the APA Delphi study report as embedded concepts. Analysis, inference, and evaluation, are examples. Each of our skills assessments is designed as a holistic measure of the construct Critical Thinking, with embedded scales that can be used to examine the embedded concepts as well.
The content validity of each of the skills measures is further supported by educators in the field of human reasoning, researchers and doctoral dissertation scholars studying human reasoning skills, and human resources professionals seeking to hire employees with strong decision skills, who adopt these assessments. Validity of measurement also requires that the testing instrument must be free of unintended distractors that influence the response choice of groups of test takers and be calibrated to the intended test taker group. Test administrators are cautioned to assure that these measures match the educational and reading level of the planned test taker group.
In all critical thinking skills assessments provided by Insight Assessment, test takers are challenged to form reasoned judgments based on a short scenario presented in the question stem. The critical thinking skills assessments do NOT test any content area knowledge. Skills questions are framed in the context of everyday concerns and use the context of the working or educational community being assessed. This improves test engagement. All necessary information needed to answer the question correctly is presented in the question stem. The fact that the skills assessments measure only critical thinking and not content knowledge makes it possible to use these instruments as a pretest and posttest to measure improvement in critical thinking that occurs during any educational program or staff development exercise. For a valid measure of critical thinking, the instrument must present the appropriate range of difficulty for the individual or group being tested to allow the accurate scaling of the score. The critical thinking skills assessments provided by Insight Assessment are calibrated to the intended population.
The employee reasoning skills instruments offered by Insight Assessment include:
Our academic series of reasoning skills assessment instruments include:
Contact Insight Assessment for information and consultation about choices of assessments that will be appropriate for your assessment project.