Learning styles, academic performance and mental health among medical students in King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To assess the prevalence of various learning styles and their correlation with academic performance and mental health of medical students. METHODS: The cross-sectional study was conducted at the King Faisal University, Houfof, Saudi Arabia, from January to June 2019, and comprised medical students regardless of gender or the academic year. Data was collected using the Visual Aural Read/write Kinesthetic questionnaire. Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 was used to assess mental health. Data was analysed using SPSS 22. RESULTS: Of the 315 students, 179(57%) were males and 136(43%) were females. Overall, 152(48.3%) subjects preferred multimodal, while 163(51.7%) preferred unimodal style; 93(29%) aural, 53(16.8%) visual, 11(3.5%) read/write and 6(1.9%) kinesthetic. Males preferred visual and quardimodal styles of learning, while females preferred aural learning (p<0.05). Academic achievement was associated with learning style (p<0.05), but no relationship was observed between depression scores and learning styles (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The most preferred learning styles among medical students were found to be aural and bimodal.