Scale for Measuring Critical Thinking Ability for Dental Residents: A Development and Validation Study

To establish and validate a short scale of critical thinking ability for dental residents based on the Byrnes theory.

Two hundred and thirty-four dental residents in total from Stomatological Hospital of Chongqing Medical University were divided into development group and validation group randomly. In the development phase, the content validation and the initial reduction was underwent by the modified Delphi method. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and reliability test was used to validate the scale in the evaluation phase.

We developed a 21 items scale after two rounds of expert consultation via Delphi method. In the evaluation phase, no significant sociodemographic difference was found among the 234 participants. Fifteen items extracted three factors and CFA results indicated acceptable goodness-of-fit indices of this scale. The scale was with a good internal consistency and reliability.

This version of critical thinking scale for the Chinese dental residents was considered to be more feasible for application in the clinical practice and dental education.