learning-styles

LSRC reference Section 7
page 96/97
Students have to rank each statement according to:
how close the statement is to their own way of thinking,
in order to reveal their ideas about learning
their relative disagreement or agreement with
comments about studying made by other students,
in order to reveal their approaches to studying and
preferences for different types of course and teaching.
Each statement is ranked 1–5 on a Likert scale and
students are encouraged to avoid choosing ‘3’. (It is not
clear why the inventory does not use a four-point scale
instead). A time limit is not suggested and students
are asked to ‘work through the comments, giving your
immediate response. In deciding your answers, think
in terms of this particular lecture course. It is also
important that you answer all the questions: check
you have’ (CRLI 1997; original emphasis).
Evaluation by authors
Most of the internal and external evaluations
of Entwistle’s inventories have focused on the ASI
and RASI: because of the evolutionary nature of the
inventories, we review the earlier inventories for
their accounts of validity and reliability, together
with the small number of evaluations of ASSIST.
Reliability
The ASI was developed through a series of pilots, with
item analyses (Ramsden and Entwistle 1981). In an
earlier study, Entwistle, Hanley and Hounsell (1979)
claimed high alpha coefficients of reliability as the basis
for retaining the six best items for each scale in the
final version of ASI. However, it is worth noting that
seven out of 12 of these have coefficients below 0.7.
We have re-ordered the scales in relation to each
approach and type of motivation as shown in Table 33:
Table 33
Reliability of ASI
sub-scales
Adapted from data
presented in Entwistle,
Hanley and Hounsell
(1979)
Deep-level approach
Comprehension learning
Surface-level approach
Operation learning
Organised study methods
Strategic approach
Achievement motivation
Intrinsic motivation
Extrinsic motivation
Fear of failure
Disillusioned attitudes
8 items, 0.60
8 items, 0.65
8 items, 0.50
8 items, 0.62
6 items, 0.72
10 items, 0.55
6 items, 0.59
6 items, 0.74
6 items, 0.70
6 items, 0.69
6 items, 0.71
In an evaluation of the ASSIST, a study of 817 first-year
students from 10 contrasting departments in three
long-established and three recently established
British universities offered the following coefficients
of reliability for three approaches to studying:
deep approach (0.84); strategic approach (0.80)
and surface apathetic approach (0.87) (CRLI 1997).
Another study involved 1284 first-year students from
three long-established and three recently established
British universities, 466 first-year students from
a Scottish technological university and 219 students
from a ‘historically disadvantaged’ South African
university of predominantly Black and Coloured
students. It aimed to analyse the factor structure
of ASSIST at sub-scale level and to carry out cluster
analysis to see how far patterns of sub-scale scores
retained their integrity across contrasting groups
of students. High coefficients of reliability were found
for sub-scales of a deep approach (0.84), a surface
apathetic approach (0.80) and a strategic approach
(0.87) (Entwistle, Tait and McCune 2000). The study
also compared sub-scale factor structure for students
who did well and those who did relatively poorly in
summative assessments.
Validity
In a study of 767 first-year, second-term students
from nine departments in three universities in the UK,
separate factor analyses were carried out on the ASI
for arts, social science and science students. According
to Entwistle, this confirmed a robust three-factor
structure: deep approach and comprehension learning;
surface approach with operation learning; organised
study methods and achievement-oriented learning
(Entwistle, Hanley and Hounsell 1979). There was
also evidence in this study that the ASI enabled some
prediction of the departments in which students would
be likely to adopt surface or deep approaches.
In a study in 1981, Ramsden and Entwistle
administered the ASI with the Course Perceptions
Questionnaire to 2208 students from 66 academic
departments in six contrasting disciplines in British
polytechnics and universities. Factor analysis
confirmed the construct validity of the three
orientations (meaning, reproducing and achievement).
From analysis of responses to the Course Perceptions
Questionnaire, they concluded that there were
correlations between students’ higher-than-average
scores on meaning orientation and high ratings
of good teaching, appropriate workload and freedom
in learning. These contextual factors were linked
to those in the ASI to form new items in the ASSIST.
In relation to the ASSIST, the Centre for Research
into Learning and Instruction (CRLI) (1997,10)
claimed that factor analysis of items in ASSIST is
confirmed from diverse studies and that ‘these factors,
and the aspects of studying they have been designed
to tap … [provide] well-established analytic categories
for describing general tendencies in studying and
their correlates’.