Approaches to studying across the adult life span: Evidence from distance education

Highlights

• Older students tend to display more desirable study behaviour than younger students.

• This effect is confounded with those of gender, subject of study and level of study.

• There is no variation with age in surface approach if these effects are controlled.

• Older students still obtain higher scores on deep approach and strategic approach.

• Nevertheless, these are small effects of little theoretical or practical importance.

Abstract

Older students in higher education exhibit more desirable forms of study behaviour than do younger students. This study investigated whether this trend continued across the adult life span, whether it was due to confounded variations in gender, subject and level of study, and whether it was of any theoretical or practical importance. A questionnaire on approaches to studying was administered to a sample of 7000 distance learners, stratified by age. Usable responses were received from 1829 men and 2032 women aged between 21 and 92. Scores on deep approach and two aspects of a strategic approach increased with age, but scores on surface approach declined with age. When the effects of gender, subject and level of study were statistically controlled, there was no significant variation in their scores on surface approach, but age differences in deep approach and strategic approach remained significant. Even so, statistically these represented only small effects.

Introduction

Interview-based research in the 1970s found that students in higher education adopted different approaches or orientations towards their studies: a deep approach, or an orientation towards understanding the meaning of their learning materials; a surface approach, or an orientation towards being able to reproduce the materials for the purposes of assessment; and a strategic approach, or an orientation towards achieving the highest possible marks or grades (Laurillard, 1979, Marton, 1976, Ramsden, 1979).

Various questionnaires were devised to measure approaches to studying in larger numbers of students, and these broadly confirmed the existence of deep, surface and strategic approaches as dimensions underlying individual differences in student learning in higher education. These questionnaires included versions of the Approaches to Studying Inventory (Ramsden & Entwistle, 1981), which later gave rise to versions of the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI: Tait & Entwistle, 1996) and the Approaches to Learning and Studying Inventory (ALSI: Entwistle, McCune, & Hounsell, 2003); versions of the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ: Biggs, 1978), which later gave rise to the Revised Two-Factor Study Process Questionnaire (Biggs, Kember, & Leung, 2001); and versions of the Inventory of Learning Styles (Vermunt & van Rijswijk, 1988).¹

The advent of these instruments meant that it was possible systematically to explore the relationships between demographic and contextual variables and students' approaches to studying. This article is concerned specifically with the relationship between students' ages and approaches to studying. At least 38 studies have reported evidence on this relationship, and their findings are summarised in Table 1. First, the modal finding (in 31 of 38 studies) is that older students tend to obtain higher scores than younger students on scales measuring a deep approach (a meaning orientation) or one or more of the relevant subscales. Second, the modal finding (in just 23 of 38 studies) is that older students tend to obtain lower scores than younger students on scales measuring a surface approach (a reproducing orientation) or one or more of the relevant subscales. Third, there is also a suggestion (in only 9 of 24 studies) that older students tend to obtain higher scores than younger students on scales measuring a strategic approach (an achieving orientation) or one or more of the relevant subscales.

It is generally assumed that a deep approach and a strategic approach are desirable forms of study behaviour, whereas a surface approach is an undesirable form of study behaviour. The evidence therefore indicates that older students are more likely to display desirable forms of study behaviour than younger students. The most commonly suggested explanation for these findings is that older students are more likely than younger students to be studying out of intrinsic interest or for their personal development (Gow and Kember, 1990, Watkins, 1982), and there is evidence from interview-based studies to support this (Gibbs, Morgan, & Taylor, 1984). Other explanations include changing teaching practices in secondary education during the 20th century and the impact of life experience in promoting desirable approaches to studying (Richardson, 1994).

Even so, there are a number of research issues that militate against an uncritical acceptance of the idea that older students display more desirable forms of study behaviour.

First, many studies listed in Table 1 provided only limited information about the age distribution of the participants. Indeed, several earlier studies provided no information about their ages at all. More recent studies tend to report age ranges and means. In many cases, the students in question were predominantly younger adults, and this leaves it unclear whether the effects in Table 1 simply reflect a contrast between secondary-school leavers and older students. However, similar results have been found in students taking courses by distance learning, who tend to be older and more diverse in age than campus-based students.

The second issue is that of how the variable of age has been operationalised. Once again, several earlier studies provided no information at all on this matter. In some cases, it would appear that the participants were simply divided into an older group and a younger group, but no cut-off was specified. Some later studies used the ages of 23 or 25 as cut-offs. More recent studies have used age as a covariate or predictor in multiple regression analyses. This assumes that the relationships between students' ages and their approaches to studying are linear across the entire adult life span.

The latter issue was addressed by Biggs, 1985, Biggs, 1987, who obtained responses to the SPQ from 2365 students at 15 institutions of higher education in Australia. Their scores on deep approach were relatively constant between the ages of 18 and 22 but showed a monotonic increase in older students. Their scores on surface approach were relatively constant between the ages of 18 and 20 but showed a monotonic decline thereafter. Finally, their scores on achieving (strategic) approach exhibited a U-shaped pattern, declining from 19 to 22 years but increasing thereafter.

Biggs did not consider the possibility that older students might be studying different subjects or at different levels from younger students. Regarding subject of study, Ramsden, 1979, Ramsden, 1983 and Ramsden and Entwistle (1981) found that arts students were more likely to adopt a deep approach and less likely to adopt a surface approach or a strategic approach than were science or social-science students. Similar results were obtained by Biggs, 1985, Biggs, 1987, Lawless and Richardson (2002), Prosser, Ramsden, Trigwell, and Martin (2003), Vermunt (2005) and Kember, Leung, and McNaught (2008). Regarding level of study, undergraduate students adopt progressively less desirable approaches to studying as they proceed through their programmes (Biggs, 1985, Biggs, 1987, Gow and Kember, 1990, Richardson, 2006b, Volet et al., 1994, Watkins and Hattie, 1985). Thus, Biggs' data might have been contaminated by confounded variations in subject and level of study.

Another variable that should be considered is that of gender. Richardson and King (1991) argued that there were no intrinsic differences in approaches to studying between men and women, and this was supported by several subsequent studies (e.g., Byrne et al., 2002, Kreber, 2003, Richardson, 1993, Vermunt, 2005). Even so, there is evidence that differences may arise in specific contexts (e.g., Duff, 2003, Hayes and Richardson, 1995, Meyer et al., 1994, Sadler-Smith, 1996, Smith and Miller, 2005). Several studies found that in distance education women were more likely than men to adopt a surface approach (Richardson, 2005, Richardson, 2006a, Richardson et al., 1999, Richardson and Price, 2003).

One further issue is whether the relationships between age and approaches to studying are of any theoretical or practical importance. Differences in the scores obtained by different groups of students may be statistically highly significant yet small in magnitude. As a result, researchers are encouraged to report measures of effect size as well as test statistics. Only two studies in Table 1 explicitly reported measures of effect size: Richardson (2005) found that variations in age explained merely 1%, 2% and 1% of the variations in students' scores on deep, strategic and surface approaches, respectively, while Burton et al. (2009) found that variations in age explained merely 2%, 2% and 4% of the variations in scores on deep, strategic and surface approaches, respectively. These results suggest that the effects of age on approaches to studying are only very modest.

The present study was carried out to address these issues by investigating variations in approaches to studying over the adult life span in students taking courses by distance learning with the U.K. Open University. Samples were drawn within age bands corresponding to successive decades of the adult life span. Students completed a questionnaire that yielded scores on deep approach, surface approach and two different aspects of a strategic approach. Comparisons were made across the age bands both in terms of their actual scores and when the effects of the students' gender, subject of study and level of study had been statistically controlled. Measures of effect size were calculated to determine whether any differences that attained statistical significance were of theoretical or practical importance.