Critical thinking skills in midwifery practice: Development of a self-assessment tool for students

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Author(s)
Carter, Amanda G
Creedy, Debra K
Sidebotham, Mary
Year published
2017
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Show full item recordAbstract
Objective: Develop and test a tool designed for use by pre-registration midwifery students to self-appraise their
critical thinking in practice.
Design: A descriptive cohort design was used.
Participants: All students (n=164) enrolled in a three-year Bachelor of Midwifery program in Queensland,
Australia.
Methods: The staged model for tool development involved item generation, mapping draft items to critical
thinking concepts and expert review to test content validity, pilot testing of the tool to a convenience sample of
students, and psychometric testing. Students (n=126, 76.8% response rate) provided demographic ...
View more >Objective: Develop and test a tool designed for use by pre-registration midwifery students to self-appraise their critical thinking in practice. Design: A descriptive cohort design was used. Participants: All students (n=164) enrolled in a three-year Bachelor of Midwifery program in Queensland, Australia. Methods: The staged model for tool development involved item generation, mapping draft items to critical thinking concepts and expert review to test content validity, pilot testing of the tool to a convenience sample of students, and psychometric testing. Students (n=126, 76.8% response rate) provided demographic details, completed the new tool, and five questions from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) via an online platform or paper version. Findings: A high content validity index score of 0.97 was achieved through expert review. Construct validity via factor analysis revealed four factors: seeks information, reflects on practice, facilitates shared decision making, and evaluates practice. The mean total score for the tool was 124.98 (SD=12.58). Total and subscale scores correlated significantly. The scale achieved good internal reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.92. Concurrent validity with the MSLQ subscale was 0.35 (p < 0.001). Conclusion: This study established the reliability and validity of the CACTiM – student version for use by preregistration midwifery students to self-assess critical thinking in practice. Implications for practice: Critical thinking skills are vital for safe and effective midwifery practice. Students’ assessment of their critical thinking development throughout their pre-registration programme makes these skills explicit, and could guide teaching innovation to address identified deficits. The availability of a reliable and valid tool assists research into the development of critical thinking in education and practice.
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View more >Objective: Develop and test a tool designed for use by pre-registration midwifery students to self-appraise their critical thinking in practice. Design: A descriptive cohort design was used. Participants: All students (n=164) enrolled in a three-year Bachelor of Midwifery program in Queensland, Australia. Methods: The staged model for tool development involved item generation, mapping draft items to critical thinking concepts and expert review to test content validity, pilot testing of the tool to a convenience sample of students, and psychometric testing. Students (n=126, 76.8% response rate) provided demographic details, completed the new tool, and five questions from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) via an online platform or paper version. Findings: A high content validity index score of 0.97 was achieved through expert review. Construct validity via factor analysis revealed four factors: seeks information, reflects on practice, facilitates shared decision making, and evaluates practice. The mean total score for the tool was 124.98 (SD=12.58). Total and subscale scores correlated significantly. The scale achieved good internal reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.92. Concurrent validity with the MSLQ subscale was 0.35 (p < 0.001). Conclusion: This study established the reliability and validity of the CACTiM – student version for use by preregistration midwifery students to self-assess critical thinking in practice. Implications for practice: Critical thinking skills are vital for safe and effective midwifery practice. Students’ assessment of their critical thinking development throughout their pre-registration programme makes these skills explicit, and could guide teaching innovation to address identified deficits. The availability of a reliable and valid tool assists research into the development of critical thinking in education and practice.
View less >
Journal Title
Midwifery
Volume
50
Copyright Statement
© 2017 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
Subject
Nursing
Nursing not elsewhere classified
Health services and systems
Public health