Factorial Reduction of the Main Scales of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) in Mexican Health Sciences University Students.

Abstract

Background: MSLQ is a self-report instrument that measures motivational orientations and learning strategies of college students and is widely used to measure self-regulated learning. MSLQ has not been translated into Spanish and validated in the Spanish-speaking Latin American population. Objective: The objective of the study is to adapt, validate, and perform a factorial reduction of 9 out of 15 scales of the MSLQ instrument and correlate the scales with the grade point average (GPA) of a sample of health sciences university students. Methods: Nine scales (48 items) of the MSLQ were translated into Spanish and adapted to the Mexican population. Students were invited directly in their classrooms and filled out an electronic questionnaire with personal variables and these nine scales of the MSLQ instrument. We performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA and CFA) and based on the EFA a reduced version of the instrument was proposed. Results: A total of 439 students were included. The CFA showed unacceptable fit parameters with the original scale, therefore an item reduction and rearrangement were performed according to the EFA, and this yielded a reduced version with six scales and 25 items which showed acceptable fit parameters. This new reduced version rearranged the items of the effort regulation scale (ERE) into two different scales newly created in this version: time regulation (TRE) and self-regulation (SRE). The scales that disappeared in the reduced version were: intrinsic goal orientation (IGO), meta-cognitive self-regulation (MSR), and elaboration (ELA). Conclusions: The reduced version showed acceptable fit parameters that included the creation of two new scales (TRE and SRE). In addition, two scales were reduced (TVA and CTH), three scales were modified (MSE, TSE and ERE), two were unmodified (RHE and ORG), and two scales were eliminated (IGO and ELA).