Spanish translation and reliability analysis of Vermunt’s inventory of learning styles in pediatric residents

Abstract

Introduction: A “learning style” is the use of a cognitive style in a given learning condition. It is the result of the temporal interaction between personal traits and context. The importance of identifying the students’ learning styles has been widely described as fundamental for achieving congruency between learning and teaching. The Vermunt Inventory of Learning Styles (VILS) is a tool to assess constituents of the learning process that have not been studied in combination. Currently there is not a similar tool that can be applied to the Spanish speaking population, since most of the existing instruments that assess learning styles have been written in English.

Objective: Translation to Spanish of Vermunt’s inventory and measurement of reliability.

Methods: We followed the methodology suggested by Brislin. In summary, a Spanish translation was done followed by a grammatical revision of the translated version and then a backtranslation to English; finally, every item in both English versions were compared. Statistics included descriptive and inferential analysis.

Results: The Spanish translation of the 120 items of the inventory was obtained, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.91.

Conclusion: Translations present some problems due to linguistic and cultural variance. The globalization of education allows tools interchange that may be translated and adapted to the cultural context of target population. Since the translation of a measurement instrument is an important step to adopt the tool in a different language, it is essential to emphasize that the quality of the translated tool be directly related to the process of translation and validation.