Validation of an instrument to assess self-perception of critical thinking in students of medicine Validación de un instrumento para evaluar la autopercepción del pensamiento crítico en estudiantes de Medicina
Academic Article in Scopus
The fast pace at which knowledge is generated means that students of medicine must develop generic skills during the course of their training. Critical thinking is essential to make self-regulated judgments based on substantiated reasoning. In order to measure students' skills, the Individual Generic Skill Questionnaire (CCGI, in Spanish) was developed, with 74 items that measure students' self-perception in the following skills: critical thinking, information literacy, self-management, time management, problem solving and decision-making. To validate the critical thinking section, 18 experts assessed the questionnaire and determined the relevance of each assertion, and the questionnaire was given to 135 students. Cronbach's alpha was 0.739 and a factorial analysis produced 3 components associated with different facets of critical thinking: information interpretation and analysis, making a judgment on a situation from objective and subjective information, and inferring the consequences of a decision based on self-regulated judgments. Descriptive statistics show that student self-perception is better regarding their preferences in assessing and inferring.
