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Figure 7 The four bipolar discontinuous scales of the MBTI Extraversion (E) Sensing (S) Thinking (T) Judging (J) Introversion (I) Intuition (N) Feeling (F) Perceiving (P) Table 11 The 16 MBTI personality types ISTJ INTJ ESTJ ENTJ ISFJ INFJ ESFJ ENFJ ISTP ISFP ESTP ESFP INTP INFP ENTP ENFP Table 12 Summary of the 10 most common MBTI types Source: Thorne and Gough (1999) Type INFP INFJ INTP Positive traits Artistic, reflective, sensitive Sincere, sympathetic, unassuming Candid, ingenious, shrewd Negative traits Careless, lazy Submissive, weak Complicated, rebellious INTJ Discreet, industrious, logical Deliberate, methodical ISTJ Calm, stable, steady Cautious, conventional ENFP Enthusiastic, outgoing, spontaneous Changeable, impulsive ENFJ Active, pleasant, sociable Demanding, impatient ENTP Enterprising, friendly, resourceful Headstrong, self-centred ENTJ Ambitious, forceful, optimistic Aggressive, egotistical ESTJ Contented, energetic, practical Prejudiced, self-satisfied Table 13 Authors’ report of test–retest reliability of the MBTI Form G Dimension E-I S-N Male respondents 0.82 0.83 Female respondents 0.83 0.85 T-F 0.82 0.80 J-P 0.87 0.86 The MBTI has been included in this review because it has had a considerable academic impact: an estimated 2000 articles were written about the instrument between 1985 and 1995 (Hammer 1996; Thorne and Gough 1999), while the bibliographic service at the Center for the Application of Psychological Type currently holds 240 references to the MBTI and learning styles. Moreover, the MBTI is ‘the most popularly used measure in the consultancy and training world’ (Furnham 1996a, 307) and is widely used in medicine (Thompson and Bing-You 1998; Stilwell et al. 1998; Houghton 2000), as well as in business, management and religious communities, both as a career development and managerial tool. Pittenger (1993) reports that over 2m copies of the MBTI are sold annually. Definition, description and scope. The instrument has a series of forced-choice questions relating to four bipolar discontinuous scales, as shown in Figure 7. The standard version of the MBTI is the 93-item Form M (1998), which has a US 7th Grade reading level. The 126-item Form G is also sometimes referred to (1985) and there is, in addition, an abbreviated (50-item) version. Some of the improvements of Form M include: the structure of the instrument, in that all items have only two response options; the introduction of Item Response Theory (IRT) scoring; and standardisation based on a large group of adults (n=3009). In all cases, scores are assigned to produce one of 16 combinations of preferences (see Table 11), which are regarded as distinctive from one another in terms of cognitive, behavioural, affective and perceptual style (see Table 12 for a summary). The complexity of the MBTI needs to be emphasised:
LSRC reference Section 5 page 48/49 On the surface, the theory behind the MBTI appears to be fairly simple. However, it is actually very complex and casual users may have problems fully understanding its implications. According to Myers and Briggs, each four letter type represents a complex set of relationships among the functions (S, N,T and F), attitudes (E and I) and attitudes toward the outer world (J and P). These various interactions are known as type dynamics. (Fleenor 2001 9 ) Some commentators in the learning styles field prefer to exclude the MBTI on the grounds that its scope as a personality measure goes beyond cognitive controls and behaviour specifically related to learning. However, the scope of the MBTI includes learning, and it was the authors’ intention that it should be a tool to aid learners (Myers, cited by Di Tiberio 1996). The MBTI was specifically designed as a tool to categorise an individual’s personality type in general, and their approaches to relationships with others. For this reason, the MBTI differs in tone from other influential personality trait theories, by being more positive or neutral in its descriptors. This aspect may account for its influence in the learning styles field, where theorists who have drawn upon it have tended to emphasise descriptors of normal behaviour and reactions, rather than the identification of pathological traits or tendencies. Miller (1991, 217) argues for the relevance of the MBTI in the learning styles field, since ‘many well-established conceptions of “learning styles”, such as Pask’s … reflect [a] cognitive emphasis … at the expense of affective and conative’ aspects. Others have tried to circumvent this problem by selecting the particular sections of the MBTI that they consider most relevant to learning. For example, Claxton and McIntyre (1994; Claxton et al. 1996) focus on ‘sensing-intuition and thinking-feeling … the combination of an individual’s preferred information-intake mode with the preferred mode of decision making’ (1994, 752), although there may be some methodological reservations about this ‘pick and mix’ approach. If the instrument has been designed to provide a holistic view of the individual, selecting and omitting scales may prejudice the validity of its research. Evaluation: reliability and validity The face validity of the MBTI is generally accepted as fairly sound by researchers from personality theory backgrounds, with the caveat (not accepted by MBTI researchers, see quote from Quenck 2003 above) that the omission of neuroticism is a theoretical weakness (Eysenck and Eysenck 1985). There has, however, been considerable debate about the construct validity of the MBTI, particularly in relation to the bimodality of the four dimensional scales. Researchers generally agree that bimodality has not been demonstrated in any of the dimensions (Hicks 1984; McCrae and Costa 1989); indeed, some argue that the bipolarity of all four scales is unsubstantiated. Girelli and Stake (1993) confirm that introversion-extraversion, sensing-intuition and thinking-feeling are not incontrovertibly bipolar, when tested in Lickert format on 165 undergraduate and postgraduate students, since more than a quarter of the subjects in their study scored highly on both pairs of a dimension. They argue (1993, 299) that as a result of these findings, ‘not only the format of the MBTI but the theoretical premise of bipolarity and type differentiation has (sic) been brought into question’. Bess and Harvey, in their analysis of 48,638 MBTI questionnaires completed by managers, found (2002, 185) that previous reports of bimodality on all four scales had been ‘artifacts caused by the particular number (and location) of the quadrature points used by default in BILOG’ – in effect, processing errors. They conclude that ‘the absence of empirical bimodality … does indeed remove a potentially powerful line of evidence that was previously available to ‘type’ advocates to cite in defence of their position’. One of the most telling criticisms is that the forced-choice format is inappropriate: ‘the ipsative scores that derive from forced-choice measures tend to yield negative intercorrelations that are difficult to interpret’ (Girelli and Stake 1993, 291). Moreover, if the dimensions are genuinely bipolar, then this will be evident even when subjects are not forced to choose (Loomis and Singer 1980). Furthermore, the MBTI has no lie scale, nor any measures designed to tap into respondents’ inclination to make socially acceptable responses (Boyle 1995), although the latter is dealt with statistically by the IRT selection and scoring method used for Form M (Quenck 2003). 9 Page numbers are not available for online Buros reports from the Mental Measurements Yearbooks.
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LSRC reference Learning styles and
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Page 5 and 6: LSRC reference Contents 1 9 13 37 4
Page 7 and 8: LSRC reference Figures and tables L
Page 9 and 10: LSRC reference Acknowledgements The
Page 11 and 12: Section 1 A systematic review of le
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Page 19 and 20: Figure 3 Vermunt’s model of learn
Page 21 and 22: We devised this classificatory syst
Page 23 and 24: The popular appeal of the notion th
Page 25 and 26: Figure 5 Gregorc’s four-channel l
Page 27 and 28: From the evidence available, we con
Page 29 and 30: Table 1 Gregorc’s Mind Styles Mod
Page 31 and 32: Table 2 Variables and factors in th
Page 33 and 34: The measures Over 25 years, Dunn an
Page 35 and 36: Table 4 Percentages of respondents
Page 37 and 38: The BES instrument has elements for
Page 39 and 40: Shwery (1994) also questioned aspec
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Page 45 and 46: Table 6 Dunn and Dunn’s model and
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Page 49 and 50: Table 9 Studies of the interaction
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Page 53 and 54: Implications for pedagogy Riding (2
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Page 69 and 70: Section 6 Flexibly stable learning
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Section 8 Implications for pedagogy
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Our recommendation in favour of inc
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Learning styles in practice: labell
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Table 44 13 learning-styles models
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It may be argued that it is importa
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