A scale calibration for vocational learning styles instrument

Abstract

Learning styles identify the behaviours and attitudes that decide an individual’s preferred method of learning. An overabundance of learning styles literatures is more focused on learners in general and have been conceptually elaborated in the literature, however, few empirical data and few appropriate instruments have been carried out on the learning style of vocational students. This article sets out to analyse the development of The Learning Styles of Vocational Student instrument to routinely identify students’ learning style in the vocational field. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to empirically evaluate the rating scale categories in the instrument that is used to evaluate the students’ learning styles in the vocational field. Guided by quantitative design, the data was collected from 57 respondents from a vocational college in the North of Malaysia. A scale calibration that is based on the Rash Model analysis specifically analyse the effective rating scale categories. The findings reveal that the instruments function optimally with a four category Likert scale across all the four dimensions, rather than a five-category structure as has been originally intended. For that, it is suggested that the initial five-category Likert scale be modified for the actual study.