Office of the Provost

CALIFORNIA CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS TEST (CCTST)

At Southeast the CCTST is given to entering students during Orientation and to all students after they have completed 75 credit hours. Completion of the test after 75 hours is required for graduation. The test is administered by Testing Services.

The 35-item 45-minute multiple choice normed test provides a Total Critical Thinking score and sub scores for Analysis, Evaluation, Inference, Deduction and Induction.

According to the experts who developed the test:

• analysis is the ability to “to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions.”

·        inference means “to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to educe the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation.”

·        evaluation is the ability  “to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person’s perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.”

 As used in the CCTST

·        inductive reasoning means “an argument’s conclusion is purportedly warranted, but not necessitated, by the assumed truth of its premises.”

·        deductive reasoning means, “the assumed truth of the premises purportedly necessitates the truth of the conclusion.”