Content Validation of a Critical Thinking Skills Test on Temperature and Heat (CTS-THT) - Article

Oct 5, 2026

This study develops and validates a Critical Thinking Skills Test on Temperature and Heat (CTS-THT) for junior high school students using Ennis’s critical thinking framework. An instrument development design is applied through literature review and a test blueprint translating five critical thinking aspects into essay items. The CTS-THT measures students’ ability to analyze arguments, interpret experimental data, define physics terms, and justify decisions. Content validity is evaluated by five validators via Aiken’s V on five rating dimensions, showing all 42 items reach V ≥ 0.60, with most items requiring no revision.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Ennis’s critical thinking framework in test development

Operationalization for temperature and heat learning

EQUATOR SCIENCE JOURNAL (ESJ) e-ISSN: 2988-3881 Journal homepage: [https://ejournal.edukhatulistiwa.com/index.php/ESJ](https://ejournal.edukhatulistiwa.com/index.php/ESJ) Content Validation of a Critical Thinking Skills Test on Temperature and Heat (CTS-THT) Sunaryo Romli1, Andi Suhandi1*, Muslim Muslim1, Ida Kaniawati1, Mohd Zaidi Bin Amiruddin1 1Science Education Study Program, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia Received: May 31, 2026 | Revised: July 21, 2026 | Accepted: August 5, 2026 First Available Online: August 11, 2026 | Publication Date: October 31, 2026 DOI: [https://doi.org/10.61142/esj.v4i3.405](https://doi.org/10.61142/esj.v4i3.405) *Corresponding author: [andi_sh@upi.edu](andi_sh@upi.edu) | Keywords:
Critical thinking; Science education; Secondary student; Temperature and heat; Validation

This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. | ABSTRACT
This study aims to develop and validate a Critical Thinking Skills Test on Temperature and Heat (CTS-THT) for junior high school students based on Ennis’s critical thinking framework. The research employs an instrument development design, beginning with a literature review, followed by a test blueprint operationalizing five aspects of critical thinking: basic clarification, basic support, inference, advanced clarification, and strategies and tactics into essay items. The CTS-THT assesses students’ ability to analyze arguments, interpret experimental data, define key physics terms, and justify decisions related to temperature and heat phenomena. Content validity is examined through expert judgment by five validators: two experts in physics education, two in educational assessment, and one in science content. The validators rate each item on five dimensions using a 0–1 scale, and content validity is quantified using Aiken’s V index. The results show that all 42 items achieve Aiken’s V coefficients of at least 0.60, indicating satisfactory content validity. Most items are valid without revision, while only a few require minor or substantive improvements. These findings indicate that the CTS-THT is a content-valid instrument for assessing junior high school students’ critical thinking skills on temperature and heat. Theoretically, this study contributes a domain-specific, Ennis-based instrument addressing gaps in existing critical thinking and physics tests. Practically, the CTS-THT provides a curriculum-aligned instrument to help science teachers assess and foster students’ critical thinking through more targeted instruction and assessment. | | --- | --- | INTRODUCTION Critical thinking skills are a central goal in science education, particularly in physics, because students must not only understand scientific concepts but also interpret information, analyze causal relationships, evaluate evidence, and draw rational conclusions when solving problems (Popescu & Morgan, 2007; Parkkinen et al., 2018; Wei et al., 2022; Saputri et al, 2026) . In physics learning, these skills are crucial for helping students understand more complex scientific phenomena and develop appropriate solutions to the problems they face in real-world contexts. Concepts such as temperature, heat, and thermal energy are fundamental to thermodynamics but often lead to misconceptions among students, so they require learning and assessment approaches that explicitly foster and assess critical thinking (Velmovská & Bartošovič, 2016; Seibert, 2021; Gavronskaya et al., 2022; Pramasdyahsari et al., 2023; Rahayu & Alsulami, 2024) . Ennis (1985) defines critical thinking as rational, reflective thought focused on deciding what to believe or do. Based on this conception, Ennis proposes a framework comprising several core abilities that can be operationalized in assessment instruments. In this study, five main aspects of Ennis’s framework serve as the conceptual basis for test development: providing basic clarification, building basic support, making infe

FAQs

What is the goal of the CTS-THT in this study?

To develop and validate a content-valid test measuring junior high students’ critical thinking skills in temperature and heat contexts.

Which critical thinking framework and aspects are used?

The study uses Ennis’s critical thinking framework, operationalizing five aspects: basic clarification, basic support, inference, advanced clarification, and strategies and tactics.

How is content validity determined and what are the results?

Five validators rate each item on five dimensions using a 0–1 scale, and Aiken’s V is calculated. All 42 items achieve Aiken’s V coefficients of at least 0.60, indicating satisfactory content validity.

Oct 5, 2026

Uploaded by EvelynWrites