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Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between response style in college course evaluation and cognitive complexity. One hundred and two undergraduate students were administered the Role Construct Repertory Test of cognitive complexity during the first half of the Spring Term of 1974. At the end of that college semester they were asked to respond to a standard thirty-five-item course evaluation questionnaire. A significant relationship between cognitive complexity and within subject variance across the thirty-five Likert-type scale items of the course evaluation instrument was hypothesized. A multiple correlation between the ten sub-scales on the cognitive complexity instrument, and the criterion, within subject variance in course evaluation, supported this hypothesis. The possibility that the construct, cognitive complexity, and the within subject range of responses in course evaluation, are both influenced by personal response bias, was discussed.

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The Effect of Response Style on Cognitive Complexity and Course Evaluation

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