Quantitative Study Procedure

3.4.1 Pilot for Quantitative Study

I was concerned that since this was the first time the ILS was to be used in Singapore, some of the terminology and contexts used in the statements for each item was liable to be misinterpreted by the students. For this reason, a pilot study was undertaken to assess the clarity of the questionnaire and ascertain whether the statements could be understood by the respondents. About fifty copies of the English version of the ILS questionnaire were distributed to students in various classes. They were allowed to attempt the questionnaire during their free timeslots and to return

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them within a week. A total of 28 questionnaires were returned. The students were asked to feedback verbally any ambiguities and difficulties faced in understanding when they read the statements and made their choices. No difficulties were reported and generally the language level used in the statements were considered easy to understand.

The ILS was also administered to 43 of my own colleagues who volunteered to assess the instrument, motivated by the opportunity to ascertain their own learning patterns. Verbal feedback was sought from them at the end of their attempt of the ILS and again no particular ambiguities or difficulties were reported. The language level used in the instrument was assessed to be within the language ability of the students. Some did raise a concern that a 100-item survey would take too long to be completed during a normal class period and may cause disruption to lesson plans.

Considering the positive verbal feedback provided, it was decided that the ILS could be used without any modifications. The data from the pilot were compiled and analysed for reliability by determining the coefficient alpha (Cronbach's α) for each domain and their respective subscales.

3.4.2 Main Quantitative Study

The ILS questionnaires were distributed to all full-time students in Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3. Ideally I would have liked to have administered the questionnaires myself so that I could ensure that the objectives of the study and instructions to the students were uniformly communicated to the students. This would have allowed any doubts faced by the students to be

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clarified immediately. However, time and schedule restrictions made this impossible. The administration was therefore undertaken with the help of colleagues teaching in the various year programmes. The distribution of questionnaires was carried out over two different class periods in case some students were absent during one period. This was to ensure sufficient number of responses could be collected. Each copy of the questionnaire was attached with a consent form as approved by Durham University’s Ethics Advisory Committee, and a Participant Information Sheet explaining the purpose of the study (a copy is provided in Appendix C). Self-explanatory instructions were provided within the questionnaire as to how it should be completed. This minimised the need for my colleagues to explain to their students when they distributed the questionnaire for me. Students were assured that their participation was voluntary and they were allowed to withdraw at any time without giving any reasons and without any prejudice. All questions were to be directed to me. My office room number, telephone contact number and email address were provided in the Information Sheet to facilitate communication should any clarifications be required.

To minimize any possible disruption to lessons, the students were asked to attempt the questionnaire outside of class time. This minimised any time pressure on the students and ensured that they did not need to rush through and compromise the accuracy of their responses. The majority of the completed questionnaires were collected by my colleagues who were assisting in the study according to the classes they taught, and the rest were returned directly to my office by the students.

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The class sizes for the Professionals’ group were smaller for each course of study compared with the full-time students. The ILS was administered to these students from four courses from two different batches with the help of my colleagues. As with the full-time students, each ILS questionnaire was accompanied by a consent form and Participant Information Sheet with the same self-explanatory instructions. The students were also allowed to attempt the questionnaire outside of their class time and the completed questionnaires were collected by my colleagues.

All the responses were keyed into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and subsequently imported into SPSS (Release 11) for analysis. The following analyses were performed:

(i) Internal Consistency Reliability - Coefficient Alpha

This analysis was included to test the internal consistency of the data (Cronbach, 1951). Cronbach’s alpha provides a reliability estimate that is suitable for multi-item scales that have a range of responses (from ‘1’ to ‘5’ such as in the case of the ILS questionnaire). This was repeated for the main study, although it was done for the pilot, to confirm the results with a larger sample.

(ii) Comparison of Means

As this study required the comparison of means for four different groups, a one-way ANOVA was chosen for this part of the analysis to minimize possible Type 1 errors that may arise from multi-group analyses, assuming equal variances and means for the groups, The Welch and Brown-Forsythe tests were also performed. These are robust tests that do not require equal

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variances and means for the groups. Post-hoc analysis was done using Tukey’s (equal variances assumed) and Tamhane’s (equal variance not assumed) tests for statistical significance in the differences between the group means.

(iii) Factor Analysis

Vermunt conducted a factor analysis on his ILS data , using principal component analysis with oblique rotation, and consistently found four learning patterns: Meaning Directed, Reproduction Directed, Application Directed and Undirected. I attempted to replicate the factor analysis for this present study to determine the learning patterns for each of the four groups (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 and Professionals) so that I could compare the respective patterns between groups to see if there were any similarities or differences. Comparisons were done with reference to the learning patterns found by Vermunt, and by other researchers in other studies done elsewhere that used the ILS.