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

Develop and test a tool designed for use by pre-registration midwifery students to self-appraise their critical thinking in practice.

A descriptive cohort design was used.

All students (n=164) enrolled in a three-year Bachelor of Midwifery program in Queensland, Australia.

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.

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).

This study established the reliability and validity of the CACTiM - student version for use by pre-registration midwifery students to self-assess critical thinking in 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.