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(Accepted 8 May, 2000)
ABSTRACT. This paper presents the re-analysis of a previously published instrument, based on Bloom's taxonomy, developed to measure the cognitive domain of the quality of life of university students. The items in this instrument were assessed using Guttman's Smallest Space Analysis. The findings generally support Bloom's conceptualization, identifying 5 of 6 dimensions in the taxonomy: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, and Evaluation. The findings provide support for the enduring utility of Bloom's taxonomy, and reinforce the ongoing need to test theoretically informed instruments using sophisticated statistical techniques.
INTRODUCTION
Developing accurate and empirically verifiable scales to measure attitudes has been a longstanding concern of social scientists. Scales that measure attitudes pertaining to "quality of life" have proven especially difficult, given the highly abstract nature of the target concept. Criticism of the existing literature on quality of life scales typically highlights deficiencies in conceptualization and/or the unsophisticated statistical techniques used.
Several years ago, a team of Canadian researchers developed scales to measure the quality of life of university students, which consisted of comprehensive questionnaires capturing both the affective and the cognitive domains of students' quality of life (Clifton et al., 1996; Roberts et al., 1992). These instruments were conceptually informed and relied on rigorous empirical testing to establish their reliability and validity. The impressive psychometrics and research utility of these scales have led to their adoption and use in several projects across various countries.
Despite the utility of these Canadian researchers' scales, the outcome of their reliance on Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956) for the measures in the cognitive domain was somewhat disappointing. Specifically, these researchers were only able to extract and identify two dimensions in the cognitive domain, even though they constructed the scale items to include all six of the dimensions in Bloom's taxonomy. The two dimensions that emerged included a Structural dimension and a Functional dimension (Clifton et al., 1996). The Structural dimension included Bloom's knowledge and comprehension measures, while the Functional dimension included measures from the application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation categories.
The failure of Clifton et al.'s (1996) effort to reconstruct the six dimensions of Bloom's taxonomy in their quality of university student life scales can be interpreted in different ways. One position is argue that the...