What type of study is this?

This is a Validation Study study.

November 9, 2025Open Access

Widening gap between college students’ perceptions and abilities: The Dunning-Kruger phenomenon in critical thinking appraisal in higher education

WYWael YousefQatar University MAMalek AbduljaberSaginaw Valley State University MOMehmet OnderHasan Kalyoncu University

Key Points

Results show self-reported critical thinking abilities among college students are much higher than actual performance.
Students scored between 117 and 123 on a critical thinking scale, indicating a disconnect in self-assessment accuracy.
Data collected from 803 college students using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis methods.
This highlights the need for improved evaluation strategies for critical thinking dispositions and abilities in higher education.

Abstract

Background Critical thinking is a collection of dispositions and abilities related to individuals’ analytical, creative, and practical cognitive and decision-making skills. The development of optimal critical thinking skills better prepares students for college and their careers. The measurement of critical thinking actual abilities like inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, or systemic thinking among college students is limited. Similarly, the assessment of all types of critical thinking like creative or practical from the perspectives of students is meager. Methods This research utilizes original data collected from 803 college students between 2020 and 2021 after securing institutional review approval for the research. Self-reported data on 30 items instrument measuring students’ ratings of their analytical, creative, and practical thinking is used. Descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests, and correlation analysis all were used to estimate the prevalence of critical thinking, and whether gender or language influence it or not. Results Results indicate that undergraduate students rated their abilities in critical thinking is very high. On all three types of critical thinking (analytical thinking, creative thinking, practical thinking), students scored between 117 and 123 on a 30-150 scale, indicating a high score. Additionally, gender and language have little to no influence over critical thinking scores. Further, analytical, creative, and practical thinking are independent from each other evident in the low correlations among all three elements. The results suggest the emergence of the Dunning-Kruger effect concerning students’ critical thinking assessment. Conclusions There is a colossal gap between students- self-reported ratings and their actual performance on critical thinking instruments. More rigorous assessments of dispositions and abilities are needed utilizing existing validated instruments in literature.

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