Validity concerns with the Revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) in undergraduate anatomy & physiology students

The 20-question Revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F), which is frequently used to categorize student learning approaches as either deep or surface, was administered to three sections of Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) courses at a highest research university in the southeastern United States as part of a larger research project. Two hundred thirty-one (231) respondents completed the full survey and 11 participants were recruited to a comparative case study. Initial review of interview transcripts raised concerns about the validity of the R-SPQ-2F results with the population of interest. Interview transcripts were coded using a priori codes corresponding to the R-SPQ-2F items, and qualitative and quantitative results were then triangulated. Additional survey responses were collected in a subsequent semester and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using the complete responses from 381 students. The CFA yielded similar or better measures of reliability and fit to the two-factor structure as those in previously reported work by other authors. Nonetheless, findings from triangulation suggest that the R-SPQ-2F was not able to group students by deep and surface approaches to learning in the context of an undergraduate A&P course. In addition, six interviews (3 deep, 3 surface) demonstrated a new theme of surface leading to deep with participants indicating that memorization was necessary for the purpose of gaining a full understanding of the course material. This mixed method analysis calls into question whether the results are valid for separating student approaches into the previously published descriptions of deep and surface approaches. The finding of the surface leading to deep orientation, which may align with previous descriptions of an achieving approach, has significant implications for both research and instruction, as memorizing and other “surface” strategies are often minimized and discouraged, yet are an important step in student learning.