Table 1.

California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory subscales – components and examples of statements

Subscale	Component*	Example of statement	Relevance to nursing†
Truth-seeking	Eager to seek the truth, courageous about asking questions, honest and objective about pursuing inquiry even if the findings do not support one’s interest or one’s preconceived opinions	It is never easy to decide between competing points of view	A truth-seeking nurse continually re-evaluates new information and evidence
Open-mindedness	Open-minded and tolerant of divergent views with sensitivity to the possibility of one’s bias. Respect the rights of others to hold different opinions	It concerns me that I might have biases of which I’m not aware	Dispositional intolerance of divergent views might preclude effective nursing interventions
Analyticity	Alert to potentially problematic situations, anticipating possible result or consequences, and prizing the application of reason and the use of evidence even if the problem at hand turns out to be challenging and difficult	It bothers me when people rely on weak arguments to defend good ideas	Being analytical allows the nurse to connect clinical observations with her or his theoretical knowledge base, and to anticipate events likely to threaten the safety or limit health potential of a given individual
Systematicity	Disposition towards organized, orderly, focused, and diligent inquiry	I always focus on the question before I attempt to answer it	Organized approaches are an indispensable part of clinical practice, and deficit in systematicity might particularly predispose a nurse to the possibility of negligence in practice
Self-confidence	Level of one’s trust one place in one’s own reasoning processes	I take pride in my ability to understand the opinions of others	An appropriate level of CT self-confidence would be desired trajectory in the nursing student and nurse clinician. Nurses who overrate their CT abilities may act with inadequate caution, while those whose CT confidence is lower than actual CT skills might be expected to demonstrate lack of leadership
Inqusitiveness	One’s intellectual curiosity and one’s desire for learning even when the application of the knowledge is not readily apparent	Learn everything you can, you never know when it could be handy	Considering that the knowledge base for competent nursing practice continues to expand, a deficit in inquisitiveness would signal a fundamental limitation of one’s potential to develop expert knowledge and clinical practice ability
Maturity	The CT mature person approaches problems, inquiry, and decision-making with a sense that some problems are necessarily ill-structured. Many times judgments must be based on standards, context and evidence which preclude certainty	The best way to solve problems is to ask someone else for the answer	This disposition has particular implications for ethical decision-making, particularly in time-pressured environments

CT, critical thinking.

^*Sources: Facione et al. (1995, 2001).

^†Source: Facione et al. (1994, p. 346–347).