Resumen

GUTIERREZ, Marisel  y  KRUMM, Gabriela. Adaptation and validation of the Sternberg's Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI) in the province of the Entre Ríos - Argentina. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2012, vol.29, n.1, pp.43-62. ISSN 1668-7027.

The thinking style is defined as a preferred way of thinking, or using and applying intellectual abilities. The model of mental self-government proposed by Sternberg (1999) identifies 13 intellectual styles that are grouped in five dimensions: function, form, level, setting, and tendency. Bearing in mind that there is insufficient material in Spanish related to thinking styles as well as little research carried out in Argentina, and that psychological assessments should not be used outside the context for which they were created (Richaud de Minzi, Lemos & Oros, 2004), the aim of this research was to study the psychometric properties of the instrument and adapt it, if necessary, to a population of young university adults in the Province of Entre Ríos (República Argentina). Additionally, some researches indifferent countries have shown results that do not coincide with the original model proposed by the author, showing two, three or four factors that group thinking styles. This research used the 104-item Thinking Styles Inventory of Sternberg and Wagner (1991), which was created to assess self-government styles in students through 13 scales: legislative, judicial, executive, monarchic, hierarchical, oligarchic, anarchic, global, local, internal, external, liberal, and conservative. After translating the inventory and having it evaluated by referees to study the items that were ambiguous to understand, the TSI was firstly applied to a pilot sample of 50, with informed consent. Since no understanding problem was observed, the instrument was administered to 350 selected university students in the Province of Entre Ríos. To evaluate the discriminative power of the items, the criteria of contrasting groups was used, analyzing with a Student's t test of difference in mean, if students with higher scores in each thinking style (25% of the students) showed significant differences in the way they responded to each item in comparison to those with lower scores (bottom 25% of the students). Of the total of 104 items, 101 were discriminated (p = .000). Secondly, a factorial analysis was carried out using the principal axis method, oblique rotation (Oblimin). Based on the anti-image matrix, multiple correlations of each items in relation to the rest of the test was assessed. A redistribution of the items was observed, creating a factor structure different from the one proposed by the authors of the original scale. The resulting instrument would evaluate thinking style through three factors and two facets: (1) Creative Style, (2) Conservative Style, and (3) Social - Individual Style. People with Creative Style are characterized by doing things their way; they establish their own rules and decide by themselves what they will do and how they will do it. They prefer problems which are not structured or planned beforehand; they minimize changes; they are flexible and open when facing different situations. People with Conservative Style follow existing procedures and rules; they minimize changes, avoid ambiguous situations and prefer structured, concrete, specific and relatively predicable situations. People with Social - Individual Style seem to include two facets: one individual and another social. The social aspect is characterized by people who are extroverted, social and oriented to others; they tend to look for relationships with others and or team work. On the other hand, the individual aspect is characterized by people who prefer to work alone without having to consult with others; they center on a task. Similarly, the reliability of the test was analyzed, from the point of view of the internal consistency, through Cronbach's alpha coefficient, with a general result of .93. The reliability of each subscale was calculated separately, the Creative Style scored .90, the Conservative Style scored .88 and the Social -Individual Style scored .69. The final Inventory of Thinking Styles resulting from this research is a reliable and valid instrument for the studied sample, consisting of 92 items which evaluate thinking styles from three factors.

Palabras clave : Thinking style; Validity; Reliability; Psychological evaluation; University students.

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