Page 97 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts
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resent a variety of perspec ves in the sample. Par cipants are instructed to sort a set of statements along a chosen con nuum on a xed grid. Next, they are asked to explain their sor ng of the statements. This narra ve informa on supports the interpreta on of the quan ta ve ndings and is used for elucida on of the results. Pa erns are iden ed in the sor ng of statements using by-person factor analysis.27 The resul ng pa erns are interpreted and described as shared perspec ves on the subject of study.
Study design
We provided students with statements on SRL behaviors in a clinical context (see Table 1) and asked them to evaluate these statements according to how well they de- scribe their learning behavior. The students sorted the statements along a con nuum ranging from “not at all applicable to me” to “very applicable to me” on a xed grid as shown in Figure 1. The study was administered through a web applica on (www. qsortouch.com).
Within the web applica on, we asked students for their informed consent and their basic demographic details. Next, we presented the statements one-by-one in ran- dom order and asked students to sort them into one of three groups: not applicable to me, neutral, and applicable to me, without limi ng the number of statements that could be assigned to any group.20 We subsequently asked the students to assign the statements in each group to one of the places on the sor ng grid. As a nal step, we asked the students to elaborate on the reasons why the statements placed at the extreme ends of the grid were most and least applicable to their learning behavior, and what they felt is characteris c for their learning in a clinical context.
Figure 1. Representa on of the grid used in the online sor ng procedure. Par cipants assigned all 52 statements to one of the places on the grid, represen ng how well each statement described their learning behavior.
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Chapter 5 Pa erns in clinical students’ self-regulated learning behavior: a Q-methodology study
