RJ Interview (RJI)

Reasoning About Current Issues Test (RCI)

 

 

The Reflective Judgment Interview

The Reflective Judgment Interview (RJI) is a semi-structured interview designed to elicit ratable data about individuals' epistemological assumptions (i.e., fundamental beliefs about knowledge and how it is acquired). "The RJI is a one hour, semi-structured discussion that typically consists of four ill-structured problems and a standard set of follow-up, or probe, questions. In addition to the standard problems listed below, problems in specific disciplines (e.g., business, chemistry, and psychology) or about specific issues (e.g., sexual orientation) have also been successfully used to assess RJ (See King & Kitchener, 1994, Resource A, pp. 259-265 for details). Standardized probe questions are posed to the respondent by a trained interviewer, who asks follow-up questions to clarify and focus a response. Each question is designed to elicit information about a particular concept of the RJ model. Trained and certified raters evaluate the transcribed responses for their consistency with the Reflective Judgment Scoring Rules (Kitchener & King, 1985). For an extensive review of the psychometric properties of the RJI, see Wood (1997)" (King & Kitchener, 2002, p. 43).

The RJI was used for theory development and validation studies. Training and certification on the RJI is no longer being offered, but an instrument called the Reasoning about Current Issues (RCI) test is now available that also measures individuals' epistemological assumptions. This instrument is described on the tab called " Using the RCI ".

The standard RJI problems are:

  1. Most historians claim that the pyramids were built as tombs for kings by the ancient Egyptians, using human labor, and aided by ropes, pulleys, and rollers. Others have suggested that the Egyptians could not have built such huge structures by themselves, for they had neither the mathematical knowledge, the necessary tools, nor an adequate source of power.


  2. Some people believe that news stories represent unbiased, objective reporting of news events. Others say that there is no such thing as unbiased, objective reporting, and that even in reporting the facts, the news reporters project their own interpretations into what they write.


  3. Many religions of the world have creation stories. These stories suggest that a divine being created the earth and its people. Scientists claim, however, that people evolved from lower animal forms (some of which are similar to apes) into the human forms known today.


  4. There have been frequent reports about the relationship between chemicals that are added to foods and the safety of these foods. Some studies indicate that such chemicals can cause cancer, making these foods unsafe to eat. Other studies, however, show that chemical additives are not harmful, and actually make the foods containing them more safe to eat.


  5. The safety of nuclear energy is currently being debated by scientists in many fields. Some scientists believe that nuclear energy is safe and that nuclear energy can substantially alleviate our dependence on non-renewable resources. Others argue that nuclear energy is inherently unsafe and that nuclear energy plants will lead to widespread and long-term environmental pollution.


(King & Kitchener, 1994, p.259)

The RJI standard probe questions are:

  1. What do you think about these statements?

  2. How did you come to hold that point of view?

  3. On what do you base that point of view?

  4. Can you ever know for sure that your position on this issue is correct? How or why not?

  5. When two people differ about matters such as this, is it the case that one opinion is right and one is wrong? If yes, what do you mean by "right"? If no, can you say that one opinion is in some way better than the other? What do you mean by "better"?

  6. How is it possible that people have such different views about this subject?

  7. How is it possible that experts in the field disagree about this subject?


In addition to the five standard problems, discipline-based RJI problems were developed for psychology, business, and chemistry.

Psychology Problems
  1. Some researchers contend that alcoholism is due, at least in part, to genetic factors. They often refer to results from a number of family studies to support this contention. Other researchers, however, do not think that alcoholism is psychologically determined. They also claim that the reason that several members of the same family often suffer from alcoholism is due to the fact that they share common family experiences, socioeconomic status, or employment.

  2. Some counselors conduct therapy with depressed clients who desire medication as a part of their therapy. These counselors believe medication is a positive, powerful force in therapy. They conduct therapy sessions with such clients and also refer them to physicians who prescribe appropriate medications. Other counselors do not believe medications are appropriate for depressed clients. These counselors argue that counseling alone is the best way to overcome depression. They believe that the benefits of medication never outweigh the physical disadvantages or the psychological disadvantages of "using drugs to solve your problems."
Business Problems
  1. Selecting and hiring the best employee is a difficult decision for employers. Some people believe that the most important criterion is how highly qualified the applicant is in relation to the written job description. Others believe it is more important that a new employee fit in with the personalities of the other members of the work team, assuming the applicant's qualifications are adequate.

  2. The 1980's was a decade of relative prosperity in the United States. Some people suggest this prosperity was due to lower tax rates. Others dispute the benefits of lower tax rates, claiming that this decade of prosperity was primarily due to other economic factors, such as low inflation or stable growth in the money supply.
 Chemistry Problems
  1. Determining the mass of an electron is an experiment that chemists have been conducting for decades. Some say that we can know this mass with certainty because we can determine it with such a high degree of precision. Others say that because all measurements involve uncertainty, we can never know the true mass of an electron.

  2. Some scientists believe that explanations of chemical phenomena, such as atomic theory, are accurate and true descriptions of atomic structure. Other scientists say that we cannot know whether or not these theories are accurate and true, but that scientists can only use such theories as working models to explain what is observed.
(from King & Kitchener, 1994, p. 102)

The Focus of RJI Problems. "The intent in the original choice of problems was to focus specifically on how people reason about intellectual issues. Thus, ill-structured moral, social, and identity problems were not included. Our assumption was that reasoning about other types of issues might have unknown domain-specific characteristics and that including other types of issues might confound the results, making them more difficult to interpret" (King and Kitchener, 1994, p. 101).

Scoring the Interviews. Trained raters evaluate transcripts of the interview for consistency with the Reflective Judgment Scoring Rules (Kitchener and King, 1985). Scoring is designed to reflect whatever stage-characteristic assumptions are evident in the transcripts. See also King & Kitchener, 1994, Resource A: Scoring Reflective Judgment Interview Transcripts.