Construction And Standardization Of The Cognitive Style Scale (Css) For Postgraduate Students

Abstract

Students’ academic performance is greatly influenced by their cognitive style. Cognitive style refers to individuals’ attitudes, preferences, habits that determine the manner by which individuals perceive, remember, think and solve problems. The goal of the present study is to develop and standardize an assessment instrument for postgraduate students’ cognitive style. The researcher conducted a pilot study with a sample of 100 postgraduate students to validate the instrument and undertake item analysis. The sample was selected from the postgraduate departments of St. Anthony’s College, Shillong and Synod College, Shillong. Spearman Brown’s Split Half Method and Cronbach’s Alpha Methods were used in the second sample of 200 post graduate students of North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong to test the reliability of the instrument. The reliability value computed in the

Spearman Brown’s Split Half Method was 0.82 and the reliability value computed in the

Cronbach’s Alpha Method was 0.73. Face validity and content validity have been established for the instrument. The researcher generated percentile scores for the tool to explain the results. The final version of the cognitive style scale has thirty-six items.