Academic Skills Used by College Students Without Brain Injury: A Validation Study

Area of Science:

• Higher Education Research
• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Measurement

Background:

• Assessing academic skills is crucial for student success in higher education.
• Existing measures may not capture the nuances of skills used in diverse learning environments.
• Understanding skill utilization in both online and in-person settings is increasingly important.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a brief, ecologically valid measure of academic-related skills.
• To assess skills applicable to both in-person and online higher education contexts.
• To create a tool for evaluating student readiness in academic settings.

Main Methods:

• Pilot study with undergraduate and graduate students (n=12) using focus groups.
• Collection of preliminary normative data from a larger sample (n=225) of students without brain injury (ages 18-35).
• Development and validation of a 27-item Likert scale assessing cognitive, communicative, and academic skills.

Main Results:

• Exploratory factor analysis identified seven distinct factors: sustained attention, metacognition, working memory, problem solving, reading comprehension, selective attention, and processing speed.
• The final instrument, the College Readiness After Mild Traumatic Brain Injury scale, was validated using responses from students without brain injury.
• Students identified skills used in both online and in-person academic learning environments.

Conclusions:

• The developed scale effectively measures academic-related skills in college students.
• The scale is validated for use in populations without brain injury.
• Future research will investigate the scale's sensitivity in students with mild traumatic brain injury returning to higher education.