Relation between students’ use of learning and study strategies and their academic and personal characteristics in Mashad University of Medical Sciences, 1999

Introduction. As, the importance of learning and study strategies in fostering academic achievement, which has generated a demand for assessing these behavior and because of the lack of information about the strategies use among college students, this study was determined to explore the learning and study strategies of medical, dentistry and pharmaceutics college students of Mashad University of Medical Sciences, and determine its relating factors. Methods. The subjects were 412 grade 1 to 3 students in medical, dentistry and pharmaceutics fields, in Mashad University of Medical Sciences, in 1999, which were randomly selected. Foreign students were excluded. Students' learning and study strategies were assessed by a self – report questionnaire, LASSI, developed by Weinstein et al (1987), prepared in Farsi –version for use in this study. The students' personal characteristics were collected from their educational dossiers, and information about semester scores was obtained from final report cards. The students learning and study strategies were also compared with the resulting profile to those of American college students. Results. There were not any significant differences in mean of learning and study strategies scores based upon students year of study, field of study and marital status. Females obtained higher scores on Attitude (p=. 000) and males on Selecting Main Idea (p=. 025). Students with history of at least one semester drop out obtained lower scores on Anxiety (p=. 000), Information Processing (p=. 005), Selecting Main Idea (p=. 033), Self-Testing (p=. 034) and Test Strategies (p=. 000). Students' performance on Test Strategies, Concentration and control of Anxiety was excellent and on Selecting Main Idea was poor. Conclusion. Correction of students' learning and study strategies is necessary, especially for students with history of drop out. In order to use LASSI as an instrument for detecting the college students learning problems, normalization of it for Iranian students is recommended.