Reliability of the VARK Questionnaire in Chinese Nursing Undergraduates

All humans learn about the world through five senses as they are the first contact point when information enters the brain. The VARK learning style inventory is the sole assessment tool to measure an individual’s learning preference in terms of senses. VARK represents visual (V), aural (A), read/write (R), and kinaesthetic (K). The aim of this study was to examine the reliability of VARK questionnaire version 7.8 in Chinese learners with four multitrait-multimethod confirmatory factor analysis (MTMM-CFA) models for further research study. A total of 177 Chinese nursing undergraduates were recruited. The results showed that correlated trait-correlated uniqueness (CTCU) was the best-fit model to the VARK scores and the reliability estimates for the scores of the VARK subscales ranged from 0.69-0.84. Among these 177 nursing students, there were 46 (26%) visual learners, 27 (15.3%) aural learners, 11 (6.2%) read/write learners, 21 (11.9%) kinaesthetic learners, and 72 (40.7%) multi-modal learners.