CRIT
The Critical Reasoning and Inference Test measures how well a reader understands an argumentative essay: its main claim, the reasons offered for it, the objections it faces, and the replies to those objections.
Developed at North Carolina State University by Gary Comstock and Daniel Grühn, CRIT is the primary outcome measure of the ICDC study and is available at no charge to faculty for non-commercial research.
How CRIT Works
Most critical thinking tests present a short scenario or a brief argument. Real disagreements about social questions are conducted in longer texts. CRIT closes that gap by asking readers to work through an essay of the kind they meet in a newspaper, a textbook, or a policy debate.
One Essay
Each version of CRIT is built around a single argumentative essay of about 1,200 words on a contested question. The reader must follow the author's reasoning from beginning to end.
Fifteen Questions
The essay is followed by 15 multiple-choice items. Each item asks about the argument itself: what the author claims, what supports the claim, what could be said against it, and how the author answers.
Four Skills
Items require the reader to identify the main claim, identify more than one reason offered in its support, find the objections the author considers, and recognize the rebuttals offered in reply.
Before and After
Parallel versions allow CRIT to be given at the start and end of a course, so that a change in score can be read as a change in the skill rather than as memory of a particular essay.
Validated. CRIT's development, psychometric properties, and correlates are reported in a peer-reviewed article in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education (2026). Findings confirm the reliability and validity of each version.
Parallel Forms
Because a test that is taken twice should not be the same test twice, CRIT exists in parallel versions built on different essays. Each version follows the same design: one essay, fifteen items, the same four skills.
Published
Three versions, each built on a 1,200-word essay, are described and validated in the 2026 article.
In Use
Parallel essay-based versions serve as the pre- and post-measure for the ICDC study and its North Carolina branch.
In Development
Item revisions continue as new data arrive. Item-level results shared by users of CRIT feed directly into this work.
Which You Receive
We share the validated 15-item version with faculty members. A 20-item version is under development with the ICDC Faculty Fellows and is not yet released.
Who Uses CRIT
CRIT was built for the ICDC study, but it measures a skill that matters in any course that asks students to read and weigh arguments.
The ICDC Study
Across the national study's four arms (control, Thinker only, Sway only, and Thinker with Sway), every student takes CRIT at entry and again at the end of the semester. It is the primary outcome by which the ICDC model is judged.
ICDC-NC
In the University of North Carolina System branch of the project, faculty fellows on all 17 UNC System campuses give CRIT at the start and end of the term, so that what students learn can be compared across the System. See ICDC-NC.
Outside Researchers
Faculty at other universities use CRIT as an outcome measure in their own studies of reasoning instruction, including randomized trials of teaching tools unrelated to ICDC. We especially welcome studies with a control or comparison group.
Instructors
Instructors use CRIT to see whether a course in critical thinking, argumentation, philosophy, or writing is moving the skill it aims to teach, and to compare sections that use different methods.
CRIT, Thinker, and Sway
CRIT is one of three parts of the ICDC curriculum. The other two are teaching tools. CRIT tells us whether the tools improve reasoning on the page; pre- and post-intervention recordings of live conversations tell us whether the skills transfer to talk.
Thinker
Online, mastery-based modules in which students learn to map and evaluate arguments: to find the conclusion, lay out the reasons, and test whether the reasons support it.
Sway
An AI-guided chat platform that pairs a student with a classmate who disagrees and structures a one-on-one conversation about a contested question.
CRIT
The pre- and post-test. Because CRIT is independent of both tools, it can measure whether either one, or the two together, changes how well students read an argument.
Researchers who use CRIT to measure the effect of Thinker or Sway in their own courses are of particular interest to us. The request form asks whether you would like to learn more about either tool.
Request Access
CRIT is free to faculty for non-commercial research. To protect the validity of the instrument, the essays, items, and scoring keys are not posted publicly. We release them only to faculty members, on request, and reply by email, usually within two weeks.
Who May Request It
Faculty members only. We do not release the instrument to graduate students or postdoctoral researchers. Students and postdocs should ask their faculty advisor to complete and submit the form; the instrument is released to the advisor.
What We Ask
Your name, title, institution, department, and a link to your directory profile at your institution, which we use to confirm your faculty status. Then: who will take CRIT and roughly how many; whether administration is supervised in person or unsupervised online; whether the study has a control group; start and end dates; the status of ethics review; and whether you plan to publish.
Conditions of Use
Items must be kept confidential and may not be published or distributed in any form outside of the research. Do not post them publicly or share them beyond your research team. Cite Comstock and Grühn (2026) in any resulting work.
Help Us Improve It
We ask whether you are willing to share de-identified, item-level response data with us. Those data are what allow us to keep evaluating and refining the instrument.
Ready to use CRIT?
Faculty members: complete the request form and we will be in touch by email. Students and postdocs: ask your faculty advisor to submit the form.
Request AccessQuestions? Write to Gary Comstock or Daniel Grühn.
How to Cite
Please cite the article when you use or discuss CRIT.
Comstock, G., & Grühn, D. (2026). Assessing critical thinking about argumentative essays: The Critical Reasoning and Inference Test (CRIT). Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2026.2653881