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

The purpose of this study was to develop a brief, ecologically valid measure of academic-related skills used by students in both in-person and online higher education.

Twelve undergraduate (n = 7) and graduate (n = 5) college students without brain injury participated in a pilot study followed by focus group semistructured interviews. Next, preliminary normative data were collected from a larger sample of undergraduate (n = 152) and graduate (n = 73) students without brain injury, ages 18-35 years. Participants were asked to rate the cognitive, communicative, and academic skills they used for in-person and online instruction. The students completed a 27-item scale (Likert, 1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree).

Following an exploratory factor analysis, seven distinct factors were retained creating the final instrument in the population without brain injury. These included sustained attention, metacognition, working memory, problem solving, reading comprehension, selective attention, and processing speed.

Responses from college students without brain injury helped to validate items on the College Readiness After Mild Traumatic Brain Injury scale. Undergraduate and graduate students identified the skills they used in both online and in-person academic learning environments. Future plans include the recruitment of students with mild traumatic brain injury returning to higher education to investigate the sensitivity of the scale.