learning-styles

Shwery (1994) also questioned aspects of the LSI:
‘The instrument is still plagued by issues related to its
construct validity and the lack of an a priori theoretical
paradigm for its development.’
Reliability
Curry (1987) judged the internal reliability of the LSI
and PEPS to be good, with an average of 0.63 for the
LSI and 0.66 for the PEPS. Yet she did not indicate
what she regarded as ‘good’ coefficients and these are
normally accepted to be 0.7 or above for a sub-scale.
LaMothe et al. (1991) carried out an independent study
of the internal consistency reliability of the PEPS with
470 nursing students. They found that only 11 of the
20 scales had alpha coefficients above 0.70, with the
environmental variables being the most reliable and
the sociological variables the least reliable.
Knapp (1994) 6 expressed concerns both about
the approach to reliability in the design of the LSI
and the reporting of reliability data: in particular,
he criticised repeating questions in the LSI to improve
its reliability. He added:
No items are, in fact, repeated word for word. They
are simply reworded … Such items contribute to
a consistency check, and are not really concerned
with reliability at all … Included in the directions
on the separate answer sheet … is the incredible
sentence ‘Some of the questions are repeated to help
make the inventory more reliable’. If that is the only
way the authors could think of to improve the reliability
of the inventory, they are in real trouble!
There are also concerns about the Dunns’ claims for
internal consistency. For example, Shwery (1994) says:
Scant evidence of reliability for scores from the LSI
is provided in the manual. The authors report [that]
‘research in 1988 indicated that 95 percent’ (p.30)
of the 22 areas … provided internal consistency
estimates of 0.60 or greater. The actual range is
0.55–0.88. Internal consistency of a number of areas …
was low. As such, the link between the areas and
justifiably making decisions about instruction in these
areas is questionable.
Murray-Harvey (1994) reported that the reliability
of ‘the majority’ of the PEPS elements was acceptable.
However, she considered ‘tactile modality’ and
‘learning in several ways’ to ‘show poor internal
consistency’ (1994, 378). In order to obtain retest
measures, she administered the PEPS to 251 students
in 1991 and again in 1992. Environmental preferences
were found to be the most stable, with coefficients
of between 0.48 (‘design’) and 0.64 (‘temperature’),
while sociological and emotional preferences were less
so (0.30 for ‘persistence’ and 0.59 for ‘responsibility’),
as might be expected from Rita Dunn’s (2001a)
characterisation of these areas as more open to
change. However, the physiological traits, which are
supposed to be relatively stable, ranged from
0.31 for a specific ‘late morning’ preference to 0.60
for a general ‘time of day’ preference (Price and Dunn
1997). Overall, 13 out of 20 variables exhibited poor
test–retest reliability scores of below 0.51.
Two separate reviews of the PEPS by Kaiser (1998)
and Thaddeus (1998) for the Mental Measurements
Yearbook highlighted concerns about the Dunns’
interpretations of reliability. Both reviews noted the
reliability coefficients of less than 0.60 for ‘motivation’,
‘authority-oriented learning’, ‘learning in several ways’,
‘tactile learning’ and ‘kinaesthetic learning’. Thaddeus
also noted that some data was missing, such as
the characteristics of the norm group to whom the
test was administered.
Validity
Criticism was directed at a section entitled ‘reliability
and validity’ in the LSI manual (Price and Dunn 1997,
10). Knapp (1994) argued that ‘there is actually
no mention of validity, much less any validity data’
and Shwery (1994) noted that ‘the reader is referred
to other studies to substantiate this claim’. These
are the dissertation studies which supporters cite
to ‘provide evidence of predictive validity’ (De Bello
1990, 206) and which underpin the meta-analyses
(Dunn et al. 1995). There were also problems in
obtaining any information about validity in the PEPS
(Kaiser 1998; Thaddeus 1998) and a problem with
extensive lists of studies provided by the Dunns,
namely that: ‘the authors expect that the validity
information for the instrument can be gleaned through
a specific examination of these studies.’ (Kaiser 7 1998).
Kaiser also makes the point that ‘just listing the
studies in which the PEPS was used does not add
to its psychometric properties’.
6
Page numbers are not available for online Buros reports from the
Mental Measurements Yearbooks. The same applies to Shwery (1994).
7
Page numbers are not available for online Buros reports from the Mental
Measurements Yearbooks. The same applies to Thaddeus (1998).