Claims

Engagement in deep learning activities, as measured by NSSE's DEEP Learning scale, shows no statistically significant relationship with objectively measured critical thinking at the end of the first year

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2010 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on an ERIC document (a report, conference paper or thesis). It is kept because 2 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i? The DEEP Learning scale did not significantly predict CAAP Critical Thinking scores after controls, including ACT Composite. → Reason 2010

Evidence

Reason 2010

Reason, R. D., Cox, B. E., McIntosh, K., & Terenzini, P. T. (2010). Deep learning as an individual, conditional, and contextual influence on first-year student outcomes. Paper presented at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Chicago, IL. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED520486

q2 · i? · associational · r2

HLM models predicting the CAAP Critical Thinking module (national mean 61.65, SD 5.39) for 5,905 first-year students; the individual DEEP coefficient was 0.002, non-significant, while ACT Composite was strongly correlated with CAAP-CT (r = .817; p < .01).

"However, the DEEP Learning scale did not have a statistically significant relationship to students’ scores on the CAAP Critical Thinking Module (Table 2)."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id deep-learning-scale-no-caap-critical-thinking-relationship
title Engagement in deep learning activities, as measured by NSSE's DEEP Learning scale, shows no statistically significant relationship with objectively measured critical thinking at the end of the first year
description Engagement in deep learning activities, as measured by NSSE's DEEP Learning scale, shows no statistically significant relationship with objectively measured critical thinking at the end of the first year
status review
evidence_strength moderate
newest_evidence 2010
source_checked 2026-10-20
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-07
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — reason-2010

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.