Validation of Learning Style Instruments and Holistic Intelligence on Achievement of Form Six Economics Students: Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Abstract

The worldwide happening authenticated that learning styles and holistic intelligence are powerful to better student achievement. This research intended to analyse the learning style instruments and holistic intelligence on the achievement of Form Six economics students. The researchers examined the learning styles (deep, surface, organised and hard work) and holistic intelligence (intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual) incorporated 29 items. For this purpose, the researchers involved 145 Form Six students as respondents in this analysis. The researchers analysed the data descriptively and measured reliability with Cronbach's Alpha employing Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). EFA data established four factors for learning styles and intelligence constructs with Eigenvalues each exceeded 1.0. The learning style construct had a KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) value of 0.891> 0.5, indicating its items were sufficient for inter-correlation and the Bartlett test was significant (Chi-Square 1715.530, p <0.05). The anti-image value (Measure of Sampling Adequacy -MSA) for item correlation exceeded 0.5 by eliminating ten items based on the lowest value in the anti-image correlation in the data cleaning process. Learning style factors accounted for 59 per cent of the overall variance. The holistic intelligence construct had a KMO value of 0.840> 0.5, the Bartlett test was significant (Chi-Square 2187.241, p <0.05), the anti-image value (Measure of Sampling Adequacy -MSA) for item correlation exceeded 0.5. The researchers eliminated three items with a communalities value of less than 0.3 and a load factor of less than 0.5. Four factors in this variable accounted for 55 per cent of the overall variance. The report concluded that the Cronbach's Alpha values obtained were 0.86 for learning styles and 0.90 for holistic intelligence, respectively. The conclusions reported that the researchers appropriately used the items for the learning styles and holistic intelligence instruments and hence, confirmed them as relevant variables.