A comparison of three selected study strategies on the dimensions of effectiveness and efficiency

Abstract

Forty-five randomly selected and assigned college freshmen participated in this study designed to compare three text study strategies for their relative effectiveness (comprehension), efficiency (time), and level of awareness (confidence). The three study strategies of 1) Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review (SQ3R), 2) Question, Read, Recite (QRR) with emphasis on text structure and main idea student-generated questions, and 3) Question, Read, Question-Product (QRQ-P), designed to develop greater metacognitive awareness of the user, were compared on three criterion measures of comprehension accuracy, time to study, and confidence in answering test questions. Using multivariate analysis of covariance with reading ability as the covariate, the results favored the metacognitive QRQ-P study strategy over the SQ3R in comprehension accuracy (effectiveness), but not over the QRR. Significant differences in time to study (efficiency) were revealed in favor of QRR and SQ3R over QRQ-P. No statistically significant differences were found in confidence (level of awareness) among the three treatments. The QRQ-P was, therefore, the most effective, and QRR the most efficient; however, interpretation of the overall results favored QRR as both the most effective and efficient, since no significant differences existed between the QRR and the QRQ-P in effectiveness and since student response was more favorable toward the QRR.