TESTING THE CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF THE PRODUCTIVITY ENVIRONMENTAL PREFERNCE SURVEY LEARNING STYLE INVENTORY INSTRUMENT

Fred Englander
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Ralph A. Terregrossa
St. John’s University
Zhaobo Wang
Fairleigh Dickinson University
ABSTRACT
This study examines the construct validity of the Productivity Environmental Preference
Survey (PEPS) utilized by the Dunn and Dunn (2006) Learning Style Model (DDLSM) in order to
discern the learning style preferences of respondents to the survey. This test is undertaken with
the use of results from the Building Excellence (BE) survey instrument, a more recently developed
DDLSM instrument. One of the important learning style preference variables that the PEPS and
BE measure is whether a student subject prefers to learn (i.e., process information) in an
‘analytical’ or ‘global’ manner.
The PEPS and the BE construct a variable to measure this preference for analytic or
global learning along a scale which represents the subject’s cognitive processing behavior. The
PEPS utilizes a more indirect approach to constructing this scale variable—relying on data from
five other learning style preference patterns. The BE utilizes a more straightforward approach
which constructs this scale variable directly, i.e., without the use of the five ‘discriminating’
learning style preferences.