Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire

Meabh Reid 

BSc [Hons] Applied Psychology

My name is Meabh Reid, I am an Applied Psychology student. My specific areas of interests are Educational psychology and Cyberpsychology. During my summer holidays I work as an SNA in summer camps for ASD primary school students. My hobbies include, horse-riding, GAA football and running. I plan to apply my knowledge I have accumulated over the past four years of my degree towards the safety of vulnerable people online as well as educating people of the dangers of online usage.

Project Description

My final year major research project investigated the association between personality traits and learning styles. Studies have contradictory research has been reported within the area of learning style and personality trait. Siddiquei & Khalid ( 2018) reported a significant relationship between extraversion with all four learning styles, however contradictory to this report Seyal et al., (2019), reported that Extraversion had no relationship within all four learning styles. A diverse amount of materials are used to measure both learning styles and personality traits. The current study uses VARK questionnaire and Big Five Inventory.


Project Objectives

Title; An Investigation into the Association Between Personality Traits and Learning Style Preferences. The current study categorised each personality trait into tree groups (low, moderate and high) and grouped learning styles into multi-model (more than one learning style preference) and single- model (one main learning style preference). 154 participants were recruited through an online link on social media and messaging platforms, all participants were 18 years or older. 4 participants where removed to carry additional statistical analysis, consisted of 35 men (23.3%) and 115 women (76.7%). Three Pearson Chi square of independence was conducted for an association between each personality trait with three levels (k=3) with learning style preferences (k=2).


Project Outcomes

Results suggest, no significant association was found in the hypotheses of the present study. The results from the present study have added significant contribution to the research on materials used in the present study. A statistical significance was found in the Openness Personality trait (low, moderate and high) and Gender (man and woman). The result indicated the need for additional research in the area of learning style prefernces and personality types within VARK questionnaire and catagorised personality traits.
Moderate Openness personality trait scored the highest between both single and multi-model learning preferences, followed by high trait of Openness in both learning style preference groups.
Moderate Agreeableness was scored highest out of all three levels. Followed by a high level of Agreeableness.
Both groups of VARK learning style preferences (Single-model and Multi-model) scored highest in moderate level of Extraversion personality trait followed by low level of Extraversion.
For future research the use of VARK questionnaire should be additionally researched for clarity and reliability of work.


Thesis Title

An Investigation into the Association Between Personality Traits and Learning Style Preferences.