Learning styles of medical students in Prince of Songkla University

Arnuparp Lekhakula, Assoc. Prof., D. of Internal Medicine, F. of Medicine, PSU.

Presented : The 1st Medical Education Academic Meeting of Thailand, 4-5 April 2000, Faculty of Medicine, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Songkhla, Thailand
Key words : medical education, learning styles, medical students

Objectives : To describe learning styles of medical students in Prince of Songkla University and to determine the correlation between grade point average (GPA) and learning styles.
Design : A cross-sectional descriptive study.
Setting : Faculty of Medicine, Prince of Songkla University
Subjects : Total first-to sixth-year medical students.
Measurement : A survey was conducted with a modified Thai version of Honey and Mumford's Learning Styles Queationnaire. It was then scored to four types of learning styles : Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist.
Results : The questionnaires were completed by first-to sixth-year medical students in 96%, 97%, 93%, 93%, 92% and 91%; with alpha reliability coefficients of 0.70, 0.73, 0.70, 0.66, 0.80 and 0.72, respectively. The overall scores revealed strong preference for the Reflector style and moderate preference for the Activist, Thorist and Pragmatist styles. The means ±SD of four learning styles scores of each year of students were shown as below. 
	Year	Active	  	Reflector               Theorist 	          Pragmatist

	First	10.90±2.69	15.43±2.07	13.67±2.47	12.54±2.58
	Second	11.33±2.47	15.29±2.35	13.22±2.86	12.83±2.49
	Third	11.55±2.46	15.89±2.20	13.71±2.55	13.34±2.72
	Fourth	10.69±2.80	15.45±2.30	13.66±2.32	12.36±2.26
	Fifth	11.32±2.34	15.59±2.32	13.69±3.04	13.10±2.39
	Sixth	11.16±2.85	16.25±1.86	14.58±2.62	13.84±2.73
The sixth-year students showed statistical significance on higher scores for the Reflector. Theorist and Pragmatist stylesover another years students. There was no correlation between GPA and scores for learning styles.
Conclusions : The preference of learning styles was background information about medical students to help the medical school inproviding a variety of teaching methods and learning activities in order to everyone to find something suitable.
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