The Cognitive Style Indicator: Development and validation of a new measurement instrument

This paper describes the development and validation of a cognitive style measure, the Cognitive Style Indicator (CoSI). Three studies were conducted to validate the CoSI. The first study consisted of 5924 employees who took part in a large-scale research with regard to career decisions. In the second study, 1580 people completed the CoSI as part of a ‘Competence Indicator’ tool on the Internet. Finally, the third study comprised 635 MBA students who completed the CoSI in the context of a ‘Management and Organization’ course. Reliability, item, and factor analyses demonstrated the internal consistency and homogeneity of three cognitive styles (knowing, planning, and creating style). In addition, substantial support was found for the instrument’s construct validity by including other cognitive style instruments, and personality and ability measures in the validation process. Criterion-related validity was confirmed by examination of the relationship between these cognitive styles and work-related characteristics. The main contributions of our research lie in (a) the development of a valid and reliable cognitive style instrument for use in organizations, and in (b) the further refinement of the analytic–intuitive cognitive style dimension by splitting the analytic pole in a knowing and a planning style.