Moderated mediating effects of gender among the components of critical thinking disposition in undergraduate students

Critical thinking disposition (CTD), as a facet of the critical thinking (CT) framework, is regarded as the activation of critical thinking skills (CTS). Although studies regarding gender difference of CTD can be found, there is a scarcity of studies on the relationships among CTD components and their mediating effects concerning gender. Additionally, traditional gender comparison of latent means neglected the influence of scales, which leads to doubt about the results on whether the difference is caused by scales or gender characteristic distinction. Measurement invariance (MI) is suggested to be confirmed before performing comparisons. Previous research has had fewer MI results for CTD inventories. Thus, this study aims to analyze the gender equality of the Employer-Employee-Supported Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (2ES-CTDI) as well as the moderated mediating effects of gender on the components of CTD among 661 Chinese undergraduates (M_age = 19.57; SD = 1.26) via MI and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) by Mplus and STATA. The results found that (a) the scale has high reliability and validity for measuring undergraduates' CTD. MI findings indicated that the configural and metric models were achieved, and the scalar model identified the partial invariance by freeing the intercepts of indicators A5, C7, and C8; (b) Girls have stronger self-efficacy and habitual truth-digging disposition, whereas boys have higher instant judgment; (c) Instant judgment has a negative influence on habitual truth-digging with self-efficacy as the competitive partial mediator, in which, gender moderated the relationship between instant judgment and self-efficacy. These findings, theoretically, proved the stability of the CTD framework of 2ES-CTDI, and practically, call for instructors to pay closer attention to the gender role in CTD cultivation.