Development and Evidence Generation of Content Validity for a Table of Specifications to Measure Study Skills in College Students

Abstract

There are different instruments that try to assess the behaviors related to the concept Study Skills. In the analysis carried out by Entwistle and McCune [1] on the conceptual bases of the study strategies inventories, it is established that there is no consensus on the terms used to refer to the various behaviors that relate to the activity of study and this is why the authors use terms such as study strategies, study processes, study styles, study approaches and study skills to refer to the same behaviors. Biggs et al. [2] in its Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ), which is one of the most used questionnaires to measure study skills, proposed a structure that may be relevant in the evaluation of the construct Study Skills, because it encompasses the deep and superficial aspects enunciated by Marton and Saljo [3], but, in turn, subdivides them into strategies (which can be understood as specific actions) and motives (referring to the elements that drive these actions). It is important to notice that Mexican culture has particular characteristics that may lead to different behaviors from those of students from other cultures such as the Anglo-Saxon. The method consisted of three stages each of which sought to generate evidence of validity from different sources for a table of specifications for the construction of an inventory of study skills for Mexican college students. The resulting indicators in the sub-dimension Surface strategy were 7; the sub-dimension Surface motivation was made up of 4 indicators; the sub-dimension Deep strategy was delimited by 11 indicators; the sub-dimension Deep motivation was constituted by 4 indicators. Finally, 26 indicators that delimit the construct Study Skills were detected.