Domain-Specificity of Need for Cognition Among High School Students

Need for Cognition (NFC) is increasingly being investigated in educational research. In contrast to other non-cognitive constructs in this area, such as academic self-concept and interest, NFC has consistently been conceptualized as domain-general. We employed structural equation modelling to address the question of whether NFC can be meaningfully and gainfully conceptualized as domain-specific. To this end, we developed a domain-specific 20-item NFC scale with parallel items for Science, Mathematics, German, and French. Additionally, domain-general NFC was assessed with five domain-general items. Using a cross-sectional sample of more than 4500 Luxembourgish 9th graders, we found that a nested-factor model incorporating both a general factor and domain-specific factors better accounted for the data than a single- factor or a correlated-factor model. However, the influence of the general factor was markedly stronger than in corresponding models for academic self-concept and interest. When controlling for the domain-specific factors, only Mathematics achievement was significantly predicted by the domain-general factor, while all achievement measures (Mathematics, French, and German) were predicted by the corresponding domain-specific factor. The nested domain-specific NFC factors were clearly empirically distinguishable from first-order domain-specific interest factors.