Effect of a systematic inquiry intervention on the critical thinking skills of a sample of master's degree students

This study examined the effect of a systematic inquiry intervention, Systematic Inquiry: The Care and Feeding of a Research Idea (SI), on the critical thinking skills, as assessed through the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (CAT), of a sample of master's degree students. An experimental study was conducted using pretest/posttest design. The four hypotheses tested in this study stated that the mean posttest CAT score of the experimental group would be significantly higher than that of the control group. They also stated that there would be significant improvement in the mean posttest score of the experimental group over the mean pretest score of the experimental group and that there would be no significant improvement in the mean posttest score of the control group when they were compared to that group's mean pretest score. The sample was a nonrandom volunteer sample of 44 American University master's degree students which was divided into randomly selected experimental and control groups. Data were collected on gender, age, and educational background of sample members. All sample members were pretested using the CAT, Form A. The experimental group was exposed to SI. Both the experimental and control groups were posttested using the CAT, Form B. Pretest and posttest data were then compared within and between groups. The results supported two of the null hypotheses. These hypotheses were that there would be no significant difference between the experimental group pretest and posttest means and that there would be no significant difference between the experimental group posttest mean and the control group posttest mean. The results supported two of the research hypotheses. These were that the mean pretest CAT score of the experimental group would not differ significantly from the mean pretest CAT score of the control group and that the mean pretest CAT score for the control group would not differ significantly from their mean posttest CAT score. The level set for statistical significance was.05. The conclusion was drawn that SI showed no significant effect on the development of critical thinking skills in the master's degree students studied.