Measuring students’ argumentation skills: validation of a test instrument

The importance of argumentation skills for academic disciplines is well evident. Two core aspects of argumentation skills are a) the recognition of argumentation fallacies and b) the recognition of the structure of arguments. These two argumentation skills might be related to domain-specific knowledge. In our study, we aim to evaluate an instrument to assess the recognition of argumentation fallacies and the structure of arguments in the context of different domains. Thus, we implemented a self-developed instrument to measure both argumentation skills in different student groups (business economic students and pre-service teachers) in different domains: a) the study-domain of their own courses, b) the study-domain of the respective other courses and c) a neutral domain (sustainability). We assumed these three domains to represent different dimensions within the ability to recognize argumentation fallacies and within the ability to recognize argument structures. This assumption could not be confirmed, what leads to the assumption that our instrument captures cross-domain argumentation skills. However, our research implies a difference in the recognition of formal compared to informal argumentation fallacies. Furthermore, the results indicate that the instrument measures argumentative skills in both groups of students equally well.