Streamline Training & Documentation: Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal

First published in 1952, the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal helps in assessing critical thinking skills in five areas:¹

Making accurate inferences

Recognizing assumptions

Engaging in sound deductive reasoning

Interpreting information (i.e., determining what conclusions one can draw, beyond a reasonable doubt, from available information)

Evaluating arguments (i.e., determining whether an argument is both important and relevant to the question at hand)

Harcourt Assessment, the publisher of the Watson-Glaser instrument,² provides norms for over 40 groups — industries, occupations, types of position (e.g., executive, manager, supervisor), and students at various levels.³

You can see sample questions here (pdf).

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¹ Goodwin Watson and Edward M. Glaser, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Yonkers, New York: World Book Company, 1952).

² Harcourt Assessment is part of Pearson, Inc. as of January 30, 2008.

³ Norms are indicators of what a particular group of individuals with specified characteristics — a "norm group" — did when confronted with the test items. For example, the norm group of accountants showed a somewhat different profile of scores on the Watson-Glaser instrument from the norm group of bank tellers.

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Labels: Critical thinking

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