Measuring the Cognitive Domain of the Quality of Life of University Students

The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument for measuring the cognitive domain of the quality of life of university students, and to report the validity and reliability of the scales that are created. The study uses a representative sample of undergraduate students from the faculty of education at a major Canadian university. The construct validity of the scales is assessed by Thomas Piazza's procedures for analyzing attitudinal items. The findings support conceptualizing the cognitive domain in terms of Structural and Functional dimensions. The Structural Dimension includes the Knowledge and Comprehension dimensions from Bloom's taxonomy and the Functional Dimension includes the Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation dimensions. The alpha reliability coefficients of the two scales are 0.88 and 0.85, respectively. Some potential applications of these scales for understanding educational attainments, as well as for the evaluation of university departments and faculties, are suggested.