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The Approaches to Studying of Portuguese Students of Introductory Accounting

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09639284.2013.766426

1468-4489

Cláudia Teixeira, Delfina Gomes, Janete Borges,

Management and Marketing Education

Abstract The focus of this paper is an investigation into the approaches to studying of Portuguese students of introductory accounting using the short version of the ASSIST instrument. In doing so, it also examined the impact upon the strategy adopted of the discipline area of students and gender. The results validate the use of the inventory with students of accounting in Portuguese higher education and add weight to the use of translated versions of this instrument elsewhere. The findings indicate that Portuguese students of introductory accounting favour a strategic approach over either a deep or a surface approach and suggest that both the individual student's discipline area and gender have an impact upon the adopted approaches to studying. Keywords: Approaches to studyingshort version of ASSISTintroductory accountingPortuguese accounting studentssubject areagender Acknowledgements We are grateful to Professor Noel Entwistle for allowing the use of ASSIST instrument on behalf of the ETL Project (Centre for Research on Learning and Instruction, University of Edinburgh) and for his useful comments on previous versions of the paper. We are grateful for the assistance of Elisa Chaleta in supplying the Portuguese version of the instrument (Chaleta et al., 2010) and for the collaboration of the students and the lecturers who participated in this study. We are also grateful for the comments received at the BAFA 2012 Conference and for the comments of two anonymous reviewers and the support of the Editor of Accounting Education: an International Journal. This research was financially supported by the Doctoral Research Support Programme, PROTEC (SFRH/BD/49559/2009), granted by the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (MCTES, Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior). Notes In part, due to the adoption and convergence with the International Accounting Standards (IAS/IFRS), published by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Although the literature often focus on the traditional contrast between 'learning style' models and the 'approaches to studying' theory, some argue for a 'rapprochement between these two traditions' (Richardson, 2011, p. 288). Traditionally, Cronbach alpha values <0.5 are considered unacceptable. However, when in the presence of psychological constructs, values lower than the traditional criteria can be expected (e.g. Kline, 1994 Kline, P. 1994. An Easy Guide to Factor Analysis, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 1999 Kline, P. 1999. The Handbook of Psychological Testing, 2, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Valadas, Gonçalves and Faísca, 2010). In addition, within the accounting field, Flood and Wilson (2008, p. 231) reported Cronbach's alpha values ranging from 0.47 to 0.80, 'which, in the main, proved to be very satisfactory'. The translation process and its problems are themes widely discussed within translation studies literature (e.g. Baker, 1995). The literature acknowledges that there are no 'perfect' translations, as, among other aspects, languages have different structures. That is the case of the English language and the Portuguese language. Both skewness and kurtosis values and the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test results reject the hypothesis that the sub-scales have normal distribution. Therefore, the principal component method was used.