Argumentative Skills in Higher Education: a national survey between italian undergraduates

A survey was conducted on the argumentative skills of Italian university students through a survey. The survey aimed to assess text comprehension and the ability to reframe personal thought, and used a structured questionnaire to collect data from a representative sample of students from various Italian universities. The survey was organized on a Google Sites platform and included three thematic tracks: "Ethics and Research," "Us and AIs," and "Technology and Childhood." 

Results showed that students had difficulty recognizing elements such as "problem" and "thesis" but fared better with supporting arguments and counter-arguments. The average scores were moderate for both text comprehension (3.64 out of 7) and critical thinking (5.58 out of 10). 

The analysis found that the ability to use factual evidence is critical to overall performance. This suggests the need to improve students' training in analysis and argumentation skills by promoting continued practice of argumentative and critical thinking exercises for greater academic and professional success.

This Zenodo record follows the full analysis process with R (https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/) and Nvivo (https://lumivero.com/products/nvivo/) composed of the following datasets, script and results:

1. Comprehension of Text and Opinion - Arg_Skills.xlsx

2. Descriptive and Inferential Statistics Argumentative Skills - Analysis_Arg_Skills.R

Any comments or improvements are welcome!