Latent Profiles of Generic Critical Online Reasoning: Examining Young Professionals in Law, Medicine, and Teaching Using Process and Performance Data

This study examines the profiles of Critical Online Reasoning (COR) among young professionals in their first year of training using log data collected during the COR assessment with unrestricted Internet access. Participants were hypothesized to exhibit heuristic or systematic COR patterns, which were mostly confirmed by latent profile analyses, where group 1 (systematic searchers) showed a higher total number of web page views and a longer dwell time than group 2 (heuristic searchers). Group 1 also visited a higher proportion of trustworthy websites, stayed longer, and had a higher COR performance. Consistent with the heuristic approach, group 2 participants placed more trust in different types of media and had a lower self-reported need for cognition compared to group 1. The study thus advocates the need for a data-triangulated framework consisting of objective log data including credibility of sources used, performance, and self-report data to discern meaningful Internet learning profiles.