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Thinking Critically About Complex Concepts
Prior to this class meeting each student prints out and completes all of the instruments
designed to measure stress that have been created by each group in the class. After the class
discussion on reliability, validity, and the biopsychosocial model, students meet with their
original groups and pair up with another group to discuss these concepts and to provide
feedback on their instruments. Students are instructed to verify the definition of stress refl-
ected in their respective instruments, ask the other group for clarification where needed, and
offer suggestions for how to improve directions, items, and response format. Students are
also instructed to give reasons for how the different definitions of stress fit within the three
components of the biopsychosocial model (e.g., an instrument that measures strain reflects
the biological component), and to predict the reliability and validity of their instruments.
Appleby’s fourth and fifth critical thinking skills, analysis and synthesis, are developed
through these tasks. In order to develop analysis, students must be able to discuss how the
different definitions of stress fit within the three components of the biopsychosocial model.
In order to demonstrate synthesis, students must be able to explain why reliability and
validity, concepts learned in other courses, are relevant to defining and measuring stress.
Step 4. Evaluation of Existing Measurement Instruments
The fourth step in this process highlights the differences between instruments designed to
measure the same concept. In this step, the instructor discusses the differences between
instruments that are developed systematically by professionals for research or clinical pur-
poses (professional measures) and instruments that are created out of interest or for enter-
tainment purposes (lay measures). Sample professional and lay measures are distributed to
highlight differences in population, item content/structure, response formats, scoring, and
directions.
After this discussion, students meet with their groups to evaluate the sample profes-
sional and lay stress measures and to discuss what similarities and differences exist between
their instrument and each of the samples. Students are instructed to consider each of the
components of instrumentation that were presented in Step 2 as well as the concepts of
reliability and validity that were presented in Step 3. Students also determine which of the
instruments (including their own) they think is the best measure of stress and create a list
of reasons to support their decision.
Appleby’s sixth critical thinking skill, evaluation, is developed through these tasks. In
order to demonstrate evaluation, each student submits a reaction paper that includes an
evaluation of one professional measure of stress and one lay measure of stress (that they
find on their own from a magazine or the Internet), a discussion of the similarities and
differences between the measures, and a discussion of which measure was identified as the
best overall stress measure.
Step 5. Final Project
The fifth and final step in this process is a culmination of all that has been discussed and
developed over the first four steps. Students meet in their groups to share the lay measures