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A Short Guide to Building Your Team’s Critical Thinking Skills

• Matt Plummer

Critical thinking isn’t an innate skill. It can be learned.

Most employers lack an effective way to objectively assess critical thinking skills and most managers don’t know how to provide specific instruction to team members in need of becoming better thinkers. Instead, most managers employ a sink-or-swim approach, ultimately creating work-arounds to keep those who can’t figure out how to “swim” from making important decisions. But it doesn’t have to be this way. To demystify what critical thinking is and how it is developed, the author’s team turned to three research-backed models: The Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment, Pearson’s RED Critical Thinking Model, and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Using these models, they developed the Critical Thinking Roadmap, a framework that breaks critical thinking down into four measurable phases: the ability to execute, synthesize, recommend, and generate.

With critical thinking ranking among the most in-demand skills for job candidates , you would think that educational institutions would prepare candidates well to be exceptional thinkers, and employers would be adept at developing such skills in existing employees. Unfortunately, both are largely untrue.

• Matt Plummer (@mtplummer) is the founder of Zarvana, which offers online programs and coaching services to help working professionals become more productive by developing time-saving habits. Before starting Zarvana, Matt spent six years at Bain & Company spin-out, The Bridgespan Group, a strategy and management consulting firm for nonprofits, foundations, and philanthropists.  

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21 Design and Analysis of Surveys

• Published: March 2018
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This chapter discusses the most important aspects of designing, administrating, and analyzing surveys in clinical research. It highlights the different topics of the main stages of survey research. It reviews the design and planning phase, especially focusing on the definition of the survey research question. It discusses the process of instrument design, from planning and development to pre-test and validation, types of sampling, and methods for survey administration. It also reviews the importance of the data analysis plan and report. Furthermore, it refers to potential problems and pitfalls, as well as legal and ethical issues encountered when conducting surveys, and strategies to address them. Finally, it includes a case study and explores different questions to be addressed when using surveys in clinical research.

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MindEdge Online Learning

Corporate, Continuing, and Higher Education

The State of Critical Thinking Survey 2019

General info, content area, millennials, boomers, and critical thinking in the digital age.

The Internet is like a fire hose of information – a lot of it good, a lot of it bad – and knowing how to make sense of all that content has never been more important. But MindEdge’s third annual State of Critical Thinking survey suggests that digital literacy and critical thinking skills are in surprisingly short supply, even among tech-savvy Millennials.

While college-educated Americans express a high level of confidence in their critical thinking skills, most could not pass a nine-question quiz designed to gauge their ability to detect fake news. Overall, 69 percent of survey respondents earned a failing grade on the quiz, correctly answering just five or fewer questions.

The failure rate among Millennials – digital natives who’ve grown up with the Internet – was even higher, at 74 percent. Baby Boomers fared somewhat better on the quiz, but a clear majority (58 percent) still received a failing grade. On the positive side, 13 percent of Boomers received an “A” or “B” by answering eight or nine questions correctly – but only 5 percent of Millennials did likewise.

MindEdge’s national survey of 1001 college-educated Americans was conducted online by Qualtrics from May 8 through May 14, 2019. In addition to the Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking Quiz, the survey included questions that probed respondents’ confidence in their own job-related skills; their perceptions of the “mainstream media”; their views on the relative accuracy of online and offline news sources; and their concerns about possible foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election.

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Critical Thinking Skills Questions

Discover the importance of critical thinking skills through a comprehensive survey. Uncover insights about their development, application, and strategies for enhancement in various aspects of life.

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Startquestion is a free survey platform which allows you to create, send and analyse survey results.

The Importance of Critical Thinking Skills in Today's World

In a fast-paced and complex world, the ability to think critically has become more important than ever. With the rapid advancement of technology and the abundance of information available at our fingertips, it is crucial for individuals to possess strong critical thinking skills to navigate through the challenges of everyday life. Critical thinking skills refer to the ability to analyze, evaluate, and interpret information effectively. They involve asking thoughtful questions, considering multiple perspectives, and making informed decisions. To assess and enhance these skills, a short survey has been designed to gauge individuals' aptitude in critical thinking. The survey consists of 20 different questions, ranging from single-choice to multiple-choice and open-ended questions. It covers various aspects of critical thinking, including its definition, importance, development, and application. Participants are provided with possible answers to select from, ensuring a comprehensive assessment. The survey aims to gather valuable insights from participants across different demographics and backgrounds. By categorizing the survey as 'Education,' we can better understand the current state of critical thinking skills in the education sector. Developing critical thinking skills is not only beneficial for students but also for professionals in various industries. It enables individuals to make well-informed decisions, solve complex problems, and think creatively. In an ever-evolving job market, employers highly value candidates with strong critical thinking abilities, as it contributes to innovation and organizational success. The survey results will provide a holistic understanding of individuals' perspectives on critical thinking skills. It will shed light on the challenges faced in developing and applying these skills, as well as the strategies employed by individuals to enhance their critical thinking abilities. In summary, the 'Critical Thinking Skills Questions' survey aims to uncover the significance of critical thinking in different aspects of life. By assessing individuals' knowledge and perspectives on critical thinking, we can identify areas for improvement and develop tailored strategies to nurture this vital skill.

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How do you counter misinformation? Critical thinking is step one

Greg Rosalsky

Late last year, in the days before the Slovakian parliamentary elections, two viral audio clips threatened to derail the campaign of a pro-Western, liberal party leader named Michal Šimečka. The first was a clip of Šimečka announcing he wanted to double the price of beer, which, in a nation known for its love of lagers and pilsners, is not exactly a popular policy position.

In a second clip, Šimečka can be heard telling a journalist about his intentions to commit fraud and rig the election. Talk about career suicide, especially for someone known as a champion of liberal democracy.

There was, however, just one issue with these audio clips: They were completely fake.

The International Press Institute has called this episode in Slovakia the first time that AI deepfakes — fake audio clips, images, or videos generated by artificial intelligence — have played a prominent role in a national election. While it's unclear whether these bogus audio clips were decisive in Slovakia's electoral contest, the fact is Šimečka's party lost the election, and a pro-Kremlin populist now leads Slovakia.

In January, a report from the World Economic Forum found that over 1,400 security experts consider misinformation and disinformation (misinformation created with the intention to mislead) the biggest global risk in the next two years — more dangerous than war, extreme weather events, inflation, and everything else that's scary. There are a bevy of new books and a constant stream of articles that wrestle with this issue. Now even economists are working to figure out how to fight misinformation.

In a new study , "Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Misinformation: Evidence from a Demand Side Field Experiment on Critical Thinking," economists John A. List, Lina M. Ramírez, Julia Seither, Jaime Unda and Beatriz Vallejo conduct a real-world experiment to see whether simple, low-cost nudges can be effective in helping consumers to reject misinformation. (Side note: List is a groundbreaking empirical economist at the University of Chicago, and he's a longtime friend of the show and this newsletter ).

While most studies have focused on the supply side of misinformation — social media platforms, nefarious suppliers of lies and hoaxes, and so on — these authors say much less attention has been paid to the demand side: increasing our capacity, as individuals, to identify and think critically about the bogus information that we may encounter in our daily lives.

A Real-Life Experiment To Fight Misinformation

The economists conducted their field experiment in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election in Colombia. Like the United States, Colombia is grappling with political polarization. Within a context of extreme tribalism, the authors suggest, truth becomes more disposable and the demand for misinformation rises. People become willing to believe and share anything in their quest for their political tribe to win.

To figure out effective ways to lower the demand for misinformation, the economists recruited over 2,000 Colombians to participate in an online experiment. These participants were randomly distributed into four different groups.

One group was shown a video demonstrating "how automatic thinking and misperceptions can affect our everyday lives." The video shows an interaction between two people from politically antagonistic social groups who, before interacting, express negative stereotypes about the other's group. The video shows a convincing journey of these two people overcoming their differences. Ultimately, they express regret over unthinkingly using stereotypes to dehumanize one another. The video ends by encouraging viewers to question their own biases by "slowing down" their thinking and thinking more critically.

Another group completed a "a personality test that shows them their cognitive traits and how this makes them prone to behavioral biases." The basic idea is they see their biases in action and become more self-aware and critical of them, thereby decreasing their demand for misinformation.

A third group both watched the video and took the personality test.

Finally, there was a control group, which neither watched the video nor took the personality test.

To gauge whether these nudges get participants to be more critical of misinformation, each group was shown a series of headlines, some completely fake and some real. Some of these headlines leaned left, others leaned right, and some were politically neutral. The participants were then asked to determine whether these headlines were fake. In addition, the participants were shown two untrue tweets, one political and one not. They were asked whether they were truthful and whether they would report either to social media moderators as misinformation.

What They Found

The economists find that the simple intervention of showing a short video of people from politically antagonistic backgrounds getting along inspires viewers to be more skeptical of and less susceptible to misinformation. They find that participants who watch the video are over 30 percent less likely to "consider fake news reliable." At the same time, the video did little to encourage viewers to report fake tweets as misinformation.

Meanwhile, the researchers find that the personality test, which forces participants to confront their own biases, has little or no effect on their propensity to believe or reject fake news. It turns out being called out on our lizard brain tribalism and other biases doesn't necessarily improve our thinking.

In a concerning twist, the economists found that participants who both took the test and watched the video became so skeptical that they were about 31 percent less likely to view true headlines as reliable. In other words, they became so distrustful that even the truth became suspect. As has become increasingly clear, this is a danger in the new world of deepfakes: not only do they make people believe untrue things, they also may make people so disoriented that they don't believe true things.

As for why the videos are successful in helping to fight misinformation, the researchers suggest that it's because they encourage people to stop dehumanizing their political opponents, think more critically, and be less willing to accept bogus narratives even when it bolsters their political beliefs or goals. Often — in a sort of kumbaya way — centrist political leaders encourage us to recognize our commonalities as fellow countrymen and work together across partisan lines. It turns out that may also help us sharpen our thinking skills and improve our ability to recognize and reject misinformation.

Critical Thinking In The Age Of AI

Of course, this study was conducted back in 2022. Back then, misinformation, for the most part, was pretty low-tech. Misinformation may now be getting turbocharged with the rapid proliferation and advancement of artificial intelligence.

List and his colleagues are far from the first scholars to suggest that helping us become more critical thinkers is an effective way to combat misinformation. University of Cambridge psychologist Sander van der Linden has done a lot of work in the realm of what's known as "psychological inoculation," basically getting people to recognize how and why we're susceptible to misinformation as a way to make us less likely to believe it when we encounter it. He's the author of a new book called Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity . Drawing an analogy to how vaccinations work, Van der Linden advocates exposing people to misinformation and showing how it's false as a way to help them spot and to reject misinformation in the wild. He calls it "prebunking" (as in debunking something before it happens).

Of course, especially with the advent of AI deepfakes, misinformation cannot only be combated on the demand side. Social media platforms, AI companies, and the government will all likely have to play an important role. There's clearly a long way to go to overcoming this problem, but we have recently seen some progress. For example, OpenAI recently began "watermarking" AI-generated images that their software produces to help people spot pictures that aren't real. And the federal government recently encouraged four companies to create new technologies to help people distinguish between authentic human speech and AI deepfakes.

This new world where the truth is harder to believe may be pretty scary. But, as this new study suggests, nudges and incentives to get us to slow our thinking, think more critically, and be less tribal could be an important part of the solution.

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• Americans Remain Critical of China

Many see China as increasingly influential and consider limiting its power a top priority

Table of contents.

• Unfavorable views of China prevail
• China’s role in the world
• China’s territorial disputes
• Americans lack confidence in Xi Jinping
• Americans increasingly see China as an enemy
• Limiting China’s power and influence
• China’s economic influence on the U.S.
• Acknowledgments
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ opinions of China, its role in the world and its impact on the U.S. economy. For this analysis, we surveyed 3,600 U.S. adults from April 1 to April 7, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

For the fifth year in a row, about eight-in-ten Americans report an unfavorable view of China, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Today, 81% of U.S. adults see the country unfavorably, including 43% who hold a very unfavorable opinion. Chinese President Xi Jinping receives similarly negative ratings.

Still, many Americans agree that China’s influence in the world has been getting stronger in recent years (71%). This sense is accompanied by concern about how China interacts with other nations: 61% of Americans are at least somewhat concerned about China’s territorial disputes with neighboring countries. (For more U.S. views of China’s role in the world, go to Chapter 1 .)

When it comes to China’s relationship with the United States, few see China as a partner (6%) and most Americans instead label it a competitor (50%) or an enemy (42%) of the U.S. They are likewise critical of China’s impact on the U.S. economy, describing its influence as large and negative. Roughly half of Americans think limiting China’s power and influence should be a top U.S. foreign policy priority, and another 42% think this should be given some priority. (For more assessments of China’s relationship with the U.S., go to Chapter 2 .)

According to the Center survey, which was conducted April 1-7, 2024, among 3,600 U.S. adults, Republicans are more wary of China than Democrats are.

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are about twice as likely as Democrats and Democratic leaners to hold a very unfavorable view of China and to consider China an enemy of the U.S. They are also more likely to say that China has recently become more influential.

Republicans also have wider ideological differences within their party, and conservative Republicans stand out on many measures :

• Conservative Republicans are 25 percentage points more likely than moderate and liberal Republicans to express a very unfavorable view of China (68% vs. 43%). There is no difference between liberal Democrats and moderate and conservative Democrats on this question.
• Conservative Republicans are also 31 points more likely than moderate and liberal Republicans to see China as an enemy of the U.S. No ideological difference is present among Democrats.
• While 83% of conservative Republicans say China’s influence in the world has been getting stronger in recent years, 68% of moderate and liberal Republicans say the same. The latter is similar to the shares of moderate and conservative Democrats (67%) and liberal Democrats (69%) who hold this view.

Older Americans are generally more critical of China. A 61% majority of adults ages 65 and older have a very unfavorable view of China, compared with 27% of adults under 30. Adults ages 65 and older are also more than twice as likely as those ages 18 to 29 to see China as an enemy of the U.S. For their part, younger adults are more likely than older ones to label China as a competitor and as a partner.

Older Americans also perceive more growth in China’s international influence. Roughly three-quarters of adults ages 65 and older say China’s influence has been getting stronger in recent years, while about two-thirds of adults under 30 say the same.

Americans with a sour view of the U.S. economy have more critical opinions of China. Those who say the current U.S. economic situation is bad are more likely to hold an unfavorable opinion of China and to say China has a great deal or fair amount of negative influence on the U.S. economy. They are also more likely to see China as an enemy when compared with those who see the economy positively.

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The State of Critical Thinking 2018

November 2018, table of contents.

Executive Summary Introduction and Background Methodology and Design Major Findings Conclusion   

Executive Summary

Critical thinking has always been an asset. But in today’s increasingly digital and globalized world, robust forms of thinking have become a necessity.  With more and more information at our fingertips, we have to be far more discerning about our choices and judgments. Just consider that in October 2018 alone, Twitter took down dozens of accounts that falsely posed as lawmakers. (1) But despite the need for more critical thinking, our institutions have not done nearly enough to give students richer thinking tools. In too many schools, critical thinking is not taught to young people. At workplaces, employers don’t do enough to prioritize richer forms of reasoning. This happens despite the fact that strong reasoning skills have become increasingly key to navigating everyday life, and a growing body of research shows that thinking critically runs in lockstep with life outcomes. Researcher Heather Butler recently conducted a study that found “critical thinkers experience fewer bad things in life.” (2)

According to Butler, good critical thinkers are far less likely to foreclose on a home or carry large credit card balances, while those without strong critical thinking skills are more likely to have an extramarital affair and drink while driving. (3) What’s more, there’s plenty of evidence that our democracy is fraying because of a lack of reflective thought. Politicians around the world are taking advantage of new technologies to push a political agenda that divides nations instead of uniting them, and there have been sharp upticks in reports of everything from racism to fascism. (4) The Reboot Foundation is dedicated to promoting richer forms of thought and to better understanding the state of critical thinking today. With that in mind, the foundation recently commissioned a survey, which will be conducted each year in an attempt to better understand shifts in the public’s views on critical thinking and what it means for the future of society. The Foundation surveyed more than 1,000 people using an online platform, and we weighted the results along demographic lines.

Our data uncovers a number of key findings.

While the public believes that critical thinking is crucial, most people believe that schools do not do enough to prepare young people to think more effectively. Across just about every demographic variable, people support more critical thinking, and nearly all respondents (95 percent) say critical thinking skills are necessary in today’s world. Still, people worry that our schools do not teach robust forms of thinking, and about 80 percent of respondents say that young people lack the ability to engage in critical thinking. Only 29 percent of respondents say that they definitively studied critical thinking in school themselves. There’s a lack of clarity about when, where, and even how critical thinking should be taught. About 48 percent of parents surveyed say that they (the parents) should be responsible for teaching critical thinking. Another 41 percent believe that educators should be responsible for teaching young people about how to think critically. And still another 22 percent believe that children themselves should be responsible.

While it’s encouraging that many feel critical thinking is a shared responsibility, this lack of consensus helps explain why people often don’t acquire better thinking skills: the teaching of the skill seems to simply fall through societal cracks.

While parents say that they know how to teach their kids critical thinking, they don’t generally practice these skills with them. In our survey, 72 percent of parents say that they know how to help their kids gain critical thinking skills, and 96 percent say that critical thinking is an important skill to teach to their children. 

But upon closer examination, we found that, on the whole, parents often fall short of teaching their children basic critical thinking skills. For instance, only 20 percent of parents frequently or daily ask their children to take an opposing view. Only a third of parents have their children regularly discuss issues without a right or wrong answer. 

Members of the public say they practice critical thinking, but their behaviors often suggest otherwise.The vast majority of respondents report that they have solid critical thinking skills, and about 67 percent of respondents say their reasoning skills have improved over time. But it seems that there’s a reality gap, and people are simply overstating their reasoning skills. Many respondents report engaging in practices that don’t show much critical thinking. For instance, we found that 47 percent of them don’t typically plan where they will obtain information while doing research. And around 27 percent use only one source of information while making a decision. The lack of critical thinking skills is particularly apparent online. For example, we found that over one-third of respondents consider Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced website, to be the equivalent of a thoroughly vetted encyclopedia. What’s more, people rely on Wikipedia almost as much as they rely on government websites for factual research, according to our study. Many do not do enough to question the accuracy of social media. People believe the accuracy of more than a third of what they read on Twitter and Facebook, for instance. Respondents are also far more likely to engage with informal, non-vetted sources for information, and just under 40 percent say they regularly read blogs instead of institutional publications like newspapers. The public says they engage opposing views, but they rarely do. Nearly 87 percent of respondents say that considering an opposing view is an important and useful exercise. But few engage in the practice, and less than a quarter of respondents actually seek out views that challenge their own. For instance, 24 percent of respondents say they avoid people with opposing views. Another 25 percent rarely or never seek out people who have different views than theirs. In other words, many people claim they solicit the views of others. But, in practice, they don’t do nearly enough to “stress test” their opinions, despite the wealth of evidence showing that engaging in opposing views is crucial to richer forms of critical thinking. (5)

What is critical thinking? We define critical thinking broadly, and we believe it is a type of reflective thought that requires reasoning, logic and analysis to make choices and understand problems. Key elements of critical thinking include seeking out opposing viewpoints, using evidence, and engaging in debate.

Introduction and Background

Critical thinking is not new. Nor are claims about its importance. The philosopher Socrates is credited with saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” For Socrates and many other ancient philosophers, reflective thinking was the ultimate human pursuit, the most important endeavor of any meaningful life.

In some ways, things have not changed at all since the time of Socrates. The unexamined life is still not worth living. But at the same time, critical thinking has become far more consequential —  and far more urgent. Today, reasoning is at the center of a 21st century society, the engine of the modern world. Technology is driving much of the need for deeper critical thinking skills. It is the primary force behind our changing economy, in which richer forms of reasoning have become some of the best predictors of economic success. Technology is also driving shifts in our social and political worlds, from the debate over alleged “fake news” to the algorithms that track our every move online. While the Internet has provided many benefits, it has made it harder to figure out fact from fiction. In more traditional forms of media, such as newspapers, there have long been clear demarcations that separate opinion pieces from reported articles. Online, however thoroughly-reported news items, op-eds, and totally unverified information are often promoted in similar ways without much distinction among them. Social media makes this problem far worse. It is now fairly easy to push out maliciously false information online, and many sites and bots aim to spread information with questionable sources. Recently, Facebook removed almost 600 pages that continually posted misleading information. (6)   One of those pages had more than 100,000 followers. (7)

Social media also pushes people to live in an echo chamber. According to Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein, sites like Twitter and Facebook encourage people to engage only with claims that align with their own views, fostering a type of societal myopia. “I wouldn’t say that we are now more isolated from diversity; there’s a lot of diversity out there, in terms of how isolated people are from diversity,” Sunstein once explained. “But many people do like to isolate themselves, and that’s a big problem.”

At the same time, technology has eroded critical thinking. Our devices are making us less able to reflect and rationalize. Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor and director of the University of California, Los Angeles Children’s Media Center, has found that as our reliance on technology has grown, our critical thinking skills have declined. We read less and consume more visual media, which does not allow for the analysis and reflection required of critical thinking. (9) As if that weren’t enough, the democratization of the media in recent decades has put more and more responsibility on individuals to ferret out truth from fiction. While institutions have taken some steps to limit falsehoods, individuals increasingly must take steps to avoid becoming prey to dishonest information. In this sense, the recent crisis over so-called “fake news” is really a crisis of our own making. Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO of the news site Axios, recently wrote, for example, that “each of us is very much to blame” for the phenomenon of fake news. He implored news consumers to think critically online. “Quit sharing stories without even reading them. Spend a few minutes to verify the trustworthiness of what you read,” he wrote. (10) But, too often, people aren’t provided enough training in robust critical thinking to be able to do that. Our schools, in particular, fall short of empowering students with better reasoning skills. This is particularly evident online. One recent Stanford University study revealed that 93 percent of college students did not know that a lobbyist website was one-sided. Fewer than 20 percent of high-schoolers were aware that just one online photo does not prove something took place. (11)

A large chunk of the public is also unskilled in using social media, often passing along “information” they’ve found online without doing their homework — that is, checking the original sources. One recent study, conducted by Columbia University, revealed that close to 60 percent of people share news-related pieces on Twitter that they have not clicked on to read at length. In other words, the headline alone was enough to confirm its legitimacy, then pass it along. (12) Problems of critical thinking are not new, of course. Long before social media, philosophers argued for better ways to challenge the unjustifiably self-assured. The most notable is the Socratic method, a still-popular instructional technique. A recent summary of the method makes its application still highly relevant: “We can consider alternative interpretations of the data and information. We can analyze key concepts and ideas. We can question assumptions being made.” (13) Ancient philosophers, then, offer both a warning and a solution. More exactly, they remind us that we need to do more to question our  assumptions and to consider alternative interpretations. Data must be more at the center of our reasoning, and no doubt, the stakes are higher than ever. To inelegantly paraphrase Socrates, an unexamined society will not survive.

Methodology and Design

As part of our research, we surveyed more than 1,100 adults using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform from September 19, 2018, to September 25, 2018. A crowdsourcing tool, Mechanical Turk has increasingly been used for surveys and other experiments, and generally researchers praise the use of the platform. “Mturk is a fast and cost-effective way to collect nonprobability samples that are more diverse than those typically used by psychologists,” noted one recent research paper. (14) We used Mturk because of its speed and convenience. The platform also allowed us to include some items on the survey that were experimental in nature, like the “heat map” question related to search results. Mturk-based surveys have limitations, to be sure. Like many online surveys, they provide convenience samples, and people using the Mturk site are younger and whiter than the population at large. (15) To make our findings generalizable, we weighed our sample data with survey weights generated by doing iterative post-stratification on our data so that the marginal sample distributions on gender, income, and age match the corresponding marginal population distributions as reported by the American Community Survey for the year 2017. (16) For the survey questions regarding critical thinking in daily life, we relied on items from the Youth Life Skills Survey. We first uncovered the series of survey items in “A Study of Critical Thinking Skills in International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme.” (17)  The items were developed by Claudia Mincemoyer, Daniel Perkins, and Catherine Munyua of Penn State. (18) The data on parents came from a subsection of the survey that only asked questions of adults who have children. To examine demographic data, we conducted crosstabs across age, income, and gender. 

Two experts in survey design and implementation provided technical advice. They are Joe McFall of The State University of New York, Fredonia and Srikant Vadali of St. Anselm College. They are not responsible for any of the interpretations of the data contained in this document For the full data results, a copy of the survey instrument or any other survey-related questions, please email Reboot Foundation advisor Ulrich Boser. He can be reached at [email protected] .

Major Findings

The public thinks critical thinking is crucial but believes young people lack such skills. In the study, nearly all respondents (more than 95 percent) say critical thinking skills are necessary in today’s world, and nearly the same percentage believe we should think more critically in our everyday lives. This opinion crossed demographic lines – men and women, rich and poor, old and young. They all agreed that critical thinking is important, and we should do more of it.

But respondents are deeply concerned that schools do not teach critical thinking. Only half of survey respondents say their experience in school gave them strong critical thinking skills. Men are 8 percentage points more likely than women to believe that their schools gave them strong critical thinking skills (50 percent for men vs. 42 percent for women). In addition, more than 80 percent of respondents believe that critical thinking skills are lacking in today’s youth, and in the survey, people point to a range of reasons for the lack of critical thinking. Some 27 percent of respondents believe that modern technology inhibits critical thinking; interestingly, women are 12 percent more likely than men to think modern technology is at fault. Another 30 percent believe that society devalues critical thinking skills. Notably, 26 percent of respondents say that critical thinking skills are lacking because of a flawed educational system. Young people are more likely to feel this way than those in older demographics, and in the 18-to-40-year-old category, 41 percent of respondents think schools are to blame. In contrast, just 28 percent of people in the 61-to-81-year-old group believe that schools are culpable. Not surprisingly, older respondents are more likely to blame technology for a lack of critical thinking. Those in the 18-to-40 age range are less critical of modern tools, with only 21 percent saying they are the cause of poor thinking. In contrast, 33 percent of 41-to-60-year-olds blame modern technology on today’s lack of critical thinking skills. There’s a gender gap as well, and women are 12 percent more likely than men to think modern technology is at fault for the crisis in critical thinking. Whatever the demographic differences, though, these findings suggest that there is a growing awareness that the modern world has deeply complicated critical thinking. Across lines of age, gender, and income, people believe that critical thinking is more important than ever. This is good news. After all, when people are aware of a problem, they’re more willing to address it. There’s a lack of clarity about when and where critical thinking should be taught. Despite the public’s enthusiasm for critical thinking skills, respondents are split over what age is appropriate for developing such skills. In our survey, 20 percent say critical thinking skills develop best in early childhood, or ages 5 and under. Another 35 percent say critical thinking is best developed during ages 6 to 12, and another 27 percent think ages 13 to 18 are best. About 13 percent say any age is good for developing critical thinking skills. There are differences along demographics lines. Women are more likely than men to favor teaching critical thinking skills during the early years. For example,  24 percent of our survey’s female respondents believe in teaching critical thinking skills to children 5 and under, whereas just 17 percent of male respondents  share that belief. There are also differences among income groups. Higher-income respondents are more likely to believe that parents should teach critical thinking during the early years. For instance, 29 percent of people in the $100,000-and-above category believe that critical thinking should be taught to children younger than 6 years of age. But just over 15 percent of those making less than $50,000 per year think that critical thinking should be taught to children younger than 6 years of age.

There is also a lack of clarity about who should be responsible for teaching critical thinking. About 74 percent of the parents surveyed say educators should be at least partially responsible for teaching young people how to think critically. Another 89 percent say they  — the parents — should be responsible. Perhaps most surprising, 22 percent of respondents believe that children themselves should be responsible for learning how to think critically. The respondents believed this idea despite the fact that most experts argue that parents, educators, and others can help improve critical thinking among young people. (19) When it comes to teaching critical thinking, the public believes that schools should play an important role. About 92 percent of respondents say that K-12 schools should require courses that develop those skills. Another 90 percent of respondents think critical thinking courses should be required in colleges and universities. 

While it is encouraging that many Americans believe that critical thinking is a shared responsibility, the lack of consensus over what inhibits it as well as how and when to teach it helps explain why people often don’t acquire better thinking skills. It is a problem of too many cooks in the critical thinking kitchen: with everyone in charge, no one is in charge.

Parents also do not typically help their children develop other important critical thinking skills. For instance, only a third of parents have their children regularly discuss issues without a right or wrong answer, despite evidence supporting the practice. (20)   What’s more, only 26 percent of parents frequently help their children evaluate evidence, which is a key skill when it comes to better reasoning.

When it comes to parents and critical thinking, there are important differences along gender lines. For instance, women report doing more critical thinking skill development with their children than men do. For instance, women are about 6 percentage points more likely than men to report that they help children evaluate evidence and arguments every day (12 percent for women, 4 percent for men).

This gender split can likely be attributed to the fact that, historically, women have been the primary caregivers of children and are, on average, at home more often. While there is room for improvement for all parents in teaching critical thinking skills, it seems that male parents in particular have the most ground to make up.

While a majority of respondents say that their critical thinking skills have improved over the years, they often don’t engage in robust critical thinking practices. When it comes to critical thinking, there’s a large gap between what people believe and how they behave.   

For instance, 67 percent of our survey respondents say they have improved their reasoning skills since graduating high school. But many respondents also report making use of specific practices that reveal weak critical thinking.

We discovered, for example, that almost 50 percent of people do not typically plan where they will obtain information before engaging in research. Our survey also reveals that around one-third of respondents will use only one source of information when making a decision. 

Again, demographics make a difference. Older people, for instance, are more likely to use more than one source of information before making a decision. Case in point: people older than 60 are 19 percentage points more likely to always use more than one source than people younger than 40 (51 percent for the older group vs. 32 for the younger group). The lack of highly developed critical thinking skills is particularly apparent when people are online. For example, we found that over one-third of people consider Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced website, to be the equivalent of a thoroughly vetted encyclopedia. Income and age have a bearing on the perception of Wikipedia as a modern day encyclopedia. Fifty percent of respondents making $50,000 or less annually say that Wikipedia is a modern version of an encyclopedia. In contrast, just 16 percent of people making $100,000 or more share that belief. Similarly, 48 percent of those 18 to 40 years old think that Wikipedia is a modern day encyclopedia. In contrast, just 25 percent of those in the 41-to-60-year age range think the technology as a robust as an encyclopedia. Social media practices also suggest a lack of critical thinking. For instance, we found that more than 40 percent of people’s online reading is made up of blogs and other informal news sources. The other 60 percent consists of material from institutional sources, like a newspaper or traditional media outlet. Not too astonishing, most younger people are more likely to read blogs. Respondents 18 to 40 years of age, for example, report that about 41 percent of what they read online tend to be blog items, whereas people in the 61-to-81-year range report their blog intake at an average of 11 percentage points less. Our results also showed that people simply don’t look at enough sources while doing online research. According to our survey, only 33 percent of respondents examine more than 5 results during an Internet search. This means that two-thirds of people rely on very limited number of sources while doing online research. 

How Young Is Too Young? At What Age Can Children Start to Engage in Critical Thinking? At first glance it may appear that young children do not have the capacity to think critically. After all, most 3-year-olds struggle to even tie their shoes. But there’s growing evidence showing that very young children have rich thinking skills. One study released this year found that preschoolers can engage in causal reasoning. (21)  Research also shows that children as young as 3 start to realize that some beliefs don’t necessarily jibe with reality. (22) Another study found that between the ages of 3 and 5, children begin to understand that what another person says is not necessarily “true” but is often more a reflection of his or her beliefs. For instance, most young children know that a statement like “the best dessert in the whole world is ice cream” is a belief, not a fact. Recent evidence suggests that different teaching methods can promote more critical thinking in young children, especially when the strategies take advantage of changes in brain development. For instance, prior to age 10, a child’s emotional intelligence takes precedence over the intellectual. So teachers and parents should allow a child to explain how she came to a conclusion without insisting she use facts to support it. This helps build self-esteem and teaches the child, at an early age, that no one person, agency or institution holds the key to the “truth,” according to researchers like Sebastian Dieguez at the University of Fribourg. During later stages, ranging from pre-adolescence to the mid-teens, teaching critical thinking is a bit trickier. Children’s brains are constantly in flux, both physically and in the ways they receive information: in class, from friends, and on social media. At these stages, research says that it is important to equip children with the skills necessary to navigate this constant, often muddied, river of information. 

Giving young people effective thinking strategies can help. For example, one useful metaphor is telling children that possessing knowledge is like being in the driver’s seat of your own car. You, no one else, is in control. Research has also shown that giving young people thorough instruction in better thinking can yield very positive results; it makes for better students and higher grades. (23)

While the public claims that they engage opposing views, they don’t actually engage other views in practice. Nearly 87 percent of respondents say that considering an opposing view is an important and useful exercise.

This is an encouraging finding, given the large body of evidence that shows that considering opposing views improves problem-solving. For instance, Scott Page at the University of Michigan has studied diversity of opinion and concluded that exposure to others’ perspectives leads to better outcomes. In fact, he found that diversity is more important than ability when it comes to problem-solving. (24) But when asked to detail how they engage in such practices in their daily lives, only 25 percent are willing to regularly have debates with people who disagree with them. A surprising 24 percent of respondents say they regularly avoid talking to people with opposing views. In other words, people might say that they want to engage other views in theory, but they rarely do so in practice. Research helps explain this gap. Decades’ worth of studies show that people prefer to socialize with those who have similar backgrounds and beliefs. The scientific term is “homophily,” or, as one study puts it, the principle that “contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people.” (25) 

Because of these homophilic tendencies, many people are uncomfortable engaging with individuals whose views differ significantly from their own. They live in something of a bubble, where they continually reinforce their own beliefs, including incorrect information about people unlike themselves, without being challenged.

The results of homophily are clear in our politics. One recent study found that half of the Republicans and Democrats surveyed found talking politics with their rivals “stressful and frustrating.” (26) And even more (65 percent Republican, 63 percent Democratic) said that, when speaking with their counterparts, they discover they have less in common politically than previously thought. In our study, men in particular are unwilling to engage in critical discussions. They are roughly 20 percentage points more likely than women to avoid people with whom they disagree (33 percent vs. 13 percent). Along income lines, the difference is comparable: respondents in the lowest income bracket are at least 20 percentage points more likely than those in the highest income bracket to do the same (66 percent vs. 54 percent). In the end, our data suggests the public overestimates its willingness to engage views that are different than its own, a crucial part of being a good critical thinker. Without these critical thinking skills, we risk becoming bad choosers. When we don’t consider the available evidence, when we settle for what is ideologically comfortable, we make incomplete decisions and we risk polarization. 

Where do you click?  An experimental approach to measuring critical thinking online.

As part of our research into critical thinking, we relied on a more experimental approach to measuring how people engage with online sources, and we created a simulation of a real-life scenario to see what links people might click on while doing online research.  Specifically, we asked respondents: “Imagine you are helping a child with a school research project about the U.S. Capitol. You have just conducted an online search through a search provider. Where would you click next?”  We used technology to measure people’s clicks similar to a “heat map,” and as shown in the image below, we found that people are almost just as likely to click on Wikipedia as they are to click on the government’s actual website.  On the positive side, respondents avoided the Capitol’s Twitter social media handle, which appears to provide the least relevant as well as least accurate set of results. (Note that the color red in the image below indicates more clicks. Green indicates fewer clicks.)

But without robust approaches to thinking, we risk deepening our own biases. We risk becoming susceptible to “fake news,” conspiracy theories and phishing scams. We risk increasing polarization, partisanship and infighting among the biggest challenges we face as a nation.

(1)* Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Tackles Rising Threat: Americans Aping Russian Schemes to Deceive,” New York Times, October 11, 2018.

(2)* Heather A. Butler, Christopher Pentoney., Mabelle P. Bong, “Why Do Smart People Do Foolish Things?” Scientific American, Springer Nature America, Inc., October 3, 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-smart-people-do-foolish-things/

(3)* Heather Butler, “Predicting real-world outcomes: Critical thinking ability is a better predictor of life decisions than intelligence,” ScienceDirect, Thinking Skills and Creativity. Volume 25, September 2017, https://www.sciencedirect.com.

(4)* Yuva Noah Harari, “Why Technology Favors Tyranny,” The Atlantic, Oct. 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/ (5)* Lu Hong and Scott E. Page “Groups of diverse problem-solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem-solvers,” PNAS, 101, 46 (2004): 16385–16389, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu.

(6)* Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Tackles Rising Threat: Americans Aping Russian Schemes to Deceive,” New York Times, October 11, 2019 (8)* S Cass Sunstein, “Danger in the Internet Echo Chamber,” Harvard Law Today, March 24, 2017, https://today.law.harvard.edu .

(9)* PM Greenfield “Technology and informal education: what is taught, what is learned,” Science, 323 (5910), (2009): 69-71, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov .

(10)* Jim VandeHei, “4 ways to fix ‘fake news,” Axios Media Inc., October 21 2018, https://www.axios.com .

(11)* Wineburg, Sam and McGrew, Sarah and Breakstone, Joel and Ortega, Teresa. (2016). “Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning. Stanford Digital Repository,”  http://purl.stanford.edu/fv751yt5934

(12)* Maksym Gabielkov et al., “Social Clicks: What and Who Gets Read on Twitter?” ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance 2016, (2016), Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France, (2016), https://hal.inria.fr https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01281190

(13)* Richard Paul and Linda Elder, “Socratic Thinking,” The Foundation for Critical Thinking, (1997),  http://www.criticalthinking.org .

(14)* Jesse Chandler and Danielle Shapiro “Conducting Clinical Research Using Crowdsourced Convenience Samples,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 12, (2016): 53-81.   https://www.annualreviews.org . (15)* Ibid., 53-81. (16)* United States Census Bureau, Surveys and Programs, “American Community Survey (ACS),” United States Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov .

(17)* Julie Wade, Natalie Wolanin, and Trisha McGaughey, “A Study of Critical Thinking Skills in the  International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme,” International Baccalaureate, (2015), https://www.ibo.org .

(18)* Human Service Research, “Youthful Life Skills Evaluation,” Human Service Research Inc.,  http://www.humanserviceresearch.com .

(19)* Abrami, Philip C., Robert M. Bernard, Evgueni Borokhovski, Anne Wade, Michael A. Surkes, Rana Tamim,  and Dai Zhang. “Instructional Interventions Affecting Critical Thinking Skills and  Dispositions: A Stage 1 Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research 78, no. 4 (December 2008): 1102– 34. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084.1102–34. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084.

(20)* Schommer, Marlene. (1990). Effects of Beliefs About the Nature of Knowledge on Comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology. 82. 498-. 10.1037/0022-0663.82.3.498. (21)* Mariel K. Goddu & Alison Gopnik, “Young Children rationally use evidence to select causally relevant variables for intervention”, (University of California, Berkeley, 2018). (22)* Kuhn, Deanna. “A Developmental Model of Critical Thinking.” Educational Researcher 28, no. 2 (1999): 16-46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1177186 .

(23)* John Perry, David Lundie & Gill Golder “Metacognition in schools: what does the literature suggest about the effectiveness of teaching metacognition in schools?” Educational Review, (2018), DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2018.1441127. (24)* Lu Hong and Scott E. Page “Groups of diverse problem-solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem-solvers,” PNAS, 101, 46 (2004): 16385–16389, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu .

(25)* Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Reviews of Sociology, 27 (2001): 415–44, http://aris.ss.uci.edu .

(26)* Pew Research Center, U.S. Politics “Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016,” Pew Research Center, June 22, 2016, http://www.people-press.org

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Medicine shortages in England ‘beyond critical’, pharmacists warn

Survey has revealed challenges faced by pharmacists and risk of harm to patients as key drugs are unavailable

• ‘We’re firefighting in the background’: the pharmacists coping with record drug shortages

Drug shortages in England are now at such critical levels that patients are at risk of immediate harm and even death, pharmacists have warned.

The situation is so serious that pharmacists increasingly have to issue “owings” to patients – telling someone that only part of their prescription can be dispensed and asking them to come back for the rest of it later, once the pharmacist has sourced the remainder.

Hundreds of different drugs have become hard or impossible to obtain, according to Community Pharmacy England (CPE), which published the report. Widespread and often long-lasting shortages posed “immediate risks to patient health and wellbeing” and caused distress, it said.

“The medicine supply challenges being faced by community pharmacies and their patients are beyond critical,” said Janet Morrison, CPE’s chief executive. “Patients with a wide range of clinical and therapeutic needs are being affected on a daily basis and this is going far beyond inconvenience, leading to frustration, anxiety and affecting their health.

“For some patients not having access to the medicines they need could lead to very serious consequences, even leaving them needing to visit A&E. Medicines shortages are leading to delays in patients being able to access certain critical or potentially life-saving medicines in a timely manner.”

Recent months have seen key medicines for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, ADHD and epilepsy becoming unavailable. Last year saw shortages of HRT , adrenalines and antibiotics.

James Davies, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s director for England, said: “Medicines shortages are disrupting treatment for some patients and destabilising their health.”

Drug manufacturers, wholesalers and suppliers needed to collaborate more closely with ministers and the NHS “to ensure a more stable supply of medicines”, he added.

CPE, which represents England’s 10,500 community pharmacies, based its findings on a survey of the views of owners of 6,100 pharmacy premises and 2,000 of their staff. It found:

79% of pharmacy staff said that medicine shortages were putting patient health at risk.

91% of pharmacy owners had seen a “significant increase” in the problem since last year.

99% of pharmacy workers found a drug was unavailable at least weekly, and 72% encountered that several times a day.

Pharmacists are finding themselves on the receiving end of abuse and hostility from patients who are frustrated and angered by not being able to get the drugs they have been prescribed.

“Most people are very understanding, but they are worried and frightened, and inevitably sometimes that boils over and we have people taking it out on us,” said Fin McCaul, the owner of an independent community pharmacy in Greater Manchester. “We have had patients being annoyed and angry, and occasions of people spitting at us. I regularly have staff in tears by the end of the day because of the sheer pressure of it all.”

Overall, 84% of pharmacy staff have experienced aggression from patients, CPE said.

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Experts said global supply and manufacturing problems were contributing to drugs being unavailable. But, Morrison added: “Low prices of medicines has made the UK a less attractive market for manufacturers and this is contributing to the reduction in supply chain resilience.”

In a major report last month the Nuffield Trust thinktank warned that drug shortages had become a “new normal” and were being worsened by Brexit.

Mark Dayan, its Brexit programme lead, said: “Nearly every available indicator shows that since 2021 we have experienced a once unthinkable level of medicines shortages again and again. The crisis jumps between products and conditions, with no sign of slowing down.”

While other western countries such as Italy and Germany were also being hit by disruptions to supply, “Brexit creates some extra obstacles for the UK because our market is now partly separated from the wider European pool of supplies,” Dayan added.

Other drugs that remain in short supply include insulin , which Type 1 diabetics need to take, and the liquid form of salbutamol, which is used to tackle serious breathing problems experienced by asthma patients.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “There are around 14,000 licensed medicines and the overwhelming majority are in good supply. Supply issues can arise for a wide range of reasons and are not specific to the UK.”

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