Investigation of the Latent Structure for the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory

Abstract

The Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) is a very popular tool for measuring the learning and study strategies of high school and college students. Prior research with the LASSI has supported the originally proposed model with three latent traits, with minor variations among the contributing subtests contributing to those traits. However, most research done to explore this latent structure for the LASSI has relied on subscale scores as factor indicators, rather than the use of items. Such work tacitly assumes that the presumed structure of the 10 subscales (i.e., which items go with which subscales) is in fact correct. However, very little work has been done to verify this structure, and the studies that have looked at this issue have provided somewhat ambiguous results. The goal of the current study was to ascertain whether, at the item level, this assumed structure does in fact hold. The results of this study revealed that the presumed subscale item structure did not fit the data well. However, results of an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), cross-validated using both EFA and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), provided an alternative factor structure at the item level.