Development of a Questionnaire to Measure the Level of Reflective Thinking

By David Kember, D. Leung, Alice Y. M. Jones, A. Loke, J. McKay, Kit Sinclair, H. Tse, C. Webb, Frances Kam Yuet Wong, M. Wong and 1 more. 2000

799 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many courses aim to promote reflective thinking or reflection upon practice, but there is a scarcity of readily usable instruments to determine whether students engage in reflective thinking and, if so, to what extent. This paper reports the development and testing of such an instrument. To ensure validity, the constructs measured were derived from the extensive literature on reflective thinking, particularly the writing of Mezirow. A combination of the literature review and initial testing led to the development of a four-scale instrument measuring four constructs; habitual action, understanding, reflection and critical reflection. The final version of the instrument was tested with a sample of 303 students from eight classes of a health science faculty. The reliability of the scales was established by acceptable Cronbach alpha values. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit to the proposed four-factor structure. Comparison of mean scores between the eight classes showed predicted significant differences on each of the four scales between undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Subfields: Education, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a7c1b7c9b959b78cde9fefd0d054895cd6e17056

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Citations in the corpus

An Examination of Reflective Thinking, Learning Approaches, and Self‐Efficacy Beliefs at the University of the South Pacific: A path analysis approach (2007, methodology): “The RTQ developed by Kember et al. (2000) contains 16 items descriptive of the four types of reflective thinking advocated by Mezirow (1977, 1991).”
Exploring students’ reflective thinking practice, deep processing strategies, effort, and achievement goal orientations (2009, methodology): “Reflection and critical thinking were measured using the Kember et al. (2000) Reflective Thinking Questionnaire (RTQ).”
The Reflective Learning Continuum: Reflecting on Reflection (2005, background): “Of particular relevance to reflective learning is the challenge construct, described by Kobasa and Puccetti (1983) as a “belief that change rather than stability is normal in life and that the anticipation of changes are interesting incentives to growth rather than threats to security” (p. 169). Col”
The Personalization of Conversational Agents in Health Care: Systematic Review (2019, background): “07; sm) • Questionnaires to measure health awareness [51], mindfulness (FMIg) [52], and reflection • To trigger deeper reflection, which would increase motivation, empowerment, and adoption of new behavior • Prolonged use of CA (additional two weeks) by half of the participants (16/33) with an avg (”
The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers (2025, neutral): “We use Kember et al. [65]’s Reflec-tive Thinking Inventory to measure participants’ baseline tendency to think reflectively.”
Relations between goals, self‐efficacy, critical thinking and deep processing strategies: a path analysis (2009, methodology): “Critical thinking was measured using four items from the Kember et al. (2000) scale.”
A critical evaluation of the usefulness of a coding scheme to categorise levels of reflective thinking (2011, methodology): “In an attempt to address these issues, Kember, with a number of colleagues, embarked on a programme of research to develop a coding scheme for identifying and assessing levels of reflective thinking (Kember et al. 1999, 2000, 2008).”
The Development of English and Mathematics Self-Efficacy: A Latent Growth Curve Analysis (2012, background): “Perhaps one pedagogical strategy that may serve to enhance children’s accuracy of self-efficacy judgments is the use of personal reflection and self-evaluation in learning (Kember et al., 2000; Kish, Sheehan, Cole, Struyk, & Kinder, 1997; Leung & Kember, 2003; Phan, 2009b).”
Reflection and reflective practice in health professions education: a systematic review (2009, methodology): “Kember et al. (2000) developed a four scale 16-item questionnaire to measure reflective thinking, based principally on Mezirow, and administered it to 303 students from eight classes of a health sciences faculty.”
Reflective journaling and metacognitive awareness: insights from a longitudinal study in higher education (2020, background): “Several researchers have stressed the benefit of using a coding scheme to analyze unstructured reflective writing to measure learners’ metacognitive awareness and regulation (Kember et al., 2000).”
A four‐category scheme for coding and assessing the level of reflection in written work (2008, methodology): “In Kember et al. (2001) we attempted to integrate college-based education with professional practice, so felt it necessary to draw on each of these contextually defined treatments of reflection and attempt a synthesized definition. The following quotation is taken from the conclusion of Kember et al”
Development of the reflective practice questionnaire: preliminary findings (2018, background): “The review by Mann et al. (2009) identified a number of studies that attempted to assess the process (e.g. Boenink, Oderwald, de Jonge, van Tilburg, & Smal, 2004; Kember et al., 2000; Silvia Mamede & Schmidt, 2004, 2005; Sobral, 2000, 2005).”