Poster

Title: Behavioural, cognitive and motivational study aspects of higher education students:
construction and validation of an inventory

José Tavares, Isabel Alarcão, José Bessa, Leandro S. Almeida and Rosa Vasconcelos

Abstract

Based on the conceptions of learning and from the research in the area of study methods and learning approaches, complemented by an analysis of the students’ discourse, we aimed to identify a set of dimensions that could better describe the learning of Portuguese attending higher education. Therefore, we composed an inventory formed by eight subscales, which included behavioural aspects (Study organization; Resources usage; Self-regulation; and Hetero-regulation), cognitive aspects (Memorization, Information management); and motivational aspects (Motivation; Expectations). In a process of analysis and item selection, an initial version formed by 122 items was applied to a sample of 375 students, from the Universities of Aveiro and Minho, and from different years and courses. The selection of items considered the respective levels of internal reliability and the factorial structure for subscales. The inventory presents the following levels of reliability: Study organization (13 items; alpha=.80); Use of resources (6 items; alpha=.73); Self-regulation (10 items; alpha=.83); Hetero-regulation (8 items = alpha=.70); Memorization (6 items; alpha=.67), information management (10 items; alpha=.86); Motivation (11 items; alpha=.82); and Expectations (8 items; alpha=.83). The items considering each one of subscales appear in a general way congregated in only one factor, explaining about 50% of the variance of the respective items.