learning-styles
learning-styles
learning-styles
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LSRC reference Section 6<br />
page 86/87<br />
Table 30<br />
Items which best<br />
characterise analysis<br />
and intuition<br />
Source:<br />
Löfström (2002)<br />
Analysis type<br />
Intuition<br />
I find detailed, methodological work satisfying.<br />
I am careful to follow rules and regulations at work.<br />
When making a decision, I take my time and thoroughly consider all relevant factors.<br />
My philosophy is that it is better to be safe than risk being sorry.<br />
I make decisions and get on with things rather than analyse every last detail.<br />
I find that ‘too much analysis results in paralysis’.<br />
My ‘gut feeling’ is just as good a basis for decision making as careful analysis.<br />
I make many of my decisions on the basis of intuition.<br />
Suggestive evidence of predictive validity was also<br />
reported. Analytic-style junior managers working in<br />
a bureaucratic structure reported higher job satisfaction<br />
than intuitives (r=0.29), and analytic-style basic grade<br />
primary school teachers were more positive about job<br />
climate than intuitives.<br />
Allinson and Hayes (1996) predicted that intuition<br />
rather than analysis would be more strongly associated<br />
with seniority in business organisations. They<br />
found that within two companies (construction and<br />
brewing), senior managers and directors came out<br />
as significantly more intuitive than lower-level managers<br />
and supervisors. The effect sizes were 0.43 and 0.41<br />
respectively. Similarly, Allinson, Chell and Hayes (2000)<br />
found that 156 successful entrepreneurs were rather<br />
more intuitive than:<br />
an opportunity sample of 257 managers and<br />
the senior construction and brewery managers<br />
previously studied.<br />
In these comparisons, the effect sizes were small to<br />
moderate (0.27, 0.09 and 0.41 respectively). However,<br />
in a later study of mentors and protégés in police,<br />
medical and engineering contexts, Armstrong, Allinson<br />
and Hayes (2002) found that mentors (who generally<br />
worked at much higher levels of responsibility than<br />
protégés) came out as more analytic than protégés<br />
(effect size 0.31). This raises two important questions:<br />
how far success in different types of organisation<br />
depends on different qualities and<br />
how far people respond differently to questionnaires<br />
such as the CSI depending on their understanding<br />
of the focus of the enquiry.<br />
External evaluation<br />
Reliability<br />
Using a Canadian sample of 89 business<br />
undergraduates, Murphy et al. (1998) found that<br />
the CSI had good internal consistency (alpha=0.83).<br />
Further confirmation of good internal consistency<br />
was provided by Sadler-Smith, Spicer and Tsang (2000)<br />
in a large-scale study which included sub-samples<br />
of management and staff in the UK and in Hong Kong.<br />
The highest level of internal consistency found was<br />
0.89 for 201 personnel practitioners, and the lowest<br />
was 0.79 for 98 owner-managers in Hong Kong.<br />
Overall, only two items failed to correlate well with<br />
the total score. Test–retest stability over 3 weeks<br />
for 79 individuals in Murphy’s study was extremely<br />
high at 0.89.<br />
Validity<br />
The idea that the CSI measures a single dimension<br />
has received much less support than empirically<br />
based criticism. Sadler-Smith, Spicer and Tsang (2000)<br />
followed the ‘parcelling’ procedure recommended<br />
by Allinson and Hayes and were able to support<br />
a single-factor model. However, Spicer (2002) pointed<br />
out that the ‘analytic’ and ‘intuitive’ item sets identified<br />
by Allinson and Hayes (1996) were far from being polar<br />
opposites and Löfström (2002) found that a two-factor<br />
model provided a good fit to the data she obtained<br />
from 228 working adults. Hodgkinson and Sadler-Smith<br />
(2003) drew attention to bias in the item-parcelling<br />
procedure used in earlier studies and, after exploratory<br />
and confirmatory factor analysis with large samples<br />
(total n=939), reported unequivocal support for<br />
a model with analysis and intuition as two moderately<br />
correlated factors.<br />
Although Sadler-Smith, Spicer and Tsang (2000) failed<br />
in their attempt to validate the CSI against Riding’s<br />
computerised Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA), the<br />
near-zero correlation reported should not be taken<br />
as a criticism of the CSI, as Riding’s instrument<br />
has since been shown to be seriously flawed (Peterson,<br />
Deary and Austin 2003a). In another study with<br />
undergraduates, Sadler-Smith (1999a, 1999b) obtained<br />
low, but statistically significant, correlations between<br />
the CSI and the meaning and achieving sub-scales<br />
of a short form of Entwistle’s ASSIST (1998).