In this research, by analysing the content of critical thinking studies, it was determined that in which direction the studies in this area have been progressed. The study is a documentary survey study. The study was limited to 141 articles which were analyzed after surveying the data base of EBSCO, Science Direct, Tyler -Francis and Ulakbim. As the result of this analysis it was determined that the most of the critical thinking studies were done in the year 2011. It was also determined that student groups were mostly taken place as the sample groups in these studies. The studies were quantitative and the scale was used as the data gathering tool. In the analyzed studies, it was also determined that survey method was mostly used as a model. It was also determine that most of the critical thinking studies in the surveyed data bases were done in Turkey. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).