An Investigation of Students' Self-Regulated Learning Strategies: Students' Qualitative and Quantitative Accounts of Their Learning Strategies

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between qualitative and quantitative measures of self-regulatory learning strategies to further investigate issues related to the validity of self-report measures. One hundred and sixty high school girls completed both the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and an open-ended questionnaire, both of which were designed to assess students' use of learning strategies in the domains of English and math. Openended responses were coded and analyzed with results indicating that most students use shallow-processing strategies when preparing for final exams. Regression analysis was also used to investigate the predictive ability of the MSLQ and the open-ended questionnaire with findings indicating both to have predictive qualities. Implications for self-regulation and the measurement of learning strategies will be discussed.