The development of a questionnaire for assessing students’ propensity for divergent or convergent thinking

This study endeavours to develop a questionnaire instrument capable of classifying respondents based on their tendencies towards divergent or convergent thinking. The questionnaire serves a valuable purpose by enabling teachers to identify the thinking potential of individual students and maximise it during the learning process. The research involved 149 junior high school (SMP) students from the West Lombok district, who participated in the stages of validity and reliability testing, and 84 respondents in the categorisation trial. The instruments were compiled and assessed through expert validation using descriptive methods, employing percentage scores. Additionally, validity was assessed using product moment correlation coefficients, reliability was measured through alpha reliability coefficients, and categorisation abilities were evaluated based on non-level categorisation (nominal). The findings revealed that the divergent and convergent categorisation questionnaires consisted of 40 items, encompassing 20 descriptors each for divergent and convergent thinking. Expert ratings yielded an average score of 89.50, falling within the excellent category. The product moment test confirmed the validity of all 40 items, with a product-moment correlation value greater than the critical value (rtable (149, 0.05)=0.16). The reliability of the questionnaire was deemed high for both the divergent and convergent item groups and satisfactory for all items, as indicated by alpha reliability coefficients of 0.64, 0.72, and 0.55, respectively. The trial results demonstrated that the questionnaire effectively categorised subjects, achieving accurate categorisation for up to 20% of the total subjects in both the divergent and convergent thinking groups.