Predominance of Multi Modality Preferences in both Males and Female I Year Medical Students, Using VARK Questionnaire

The sensory modality which we use to assimilate and learn information may be visual (V), auditory (A), read-write (%) or Kinesthetic (K). Individuals who prefer one modality are said to be unimodal and those preferring two or more than two sensory modality are multimodal. Medical students are no exception to this. Males and females excel differently from each other as males have better spatial ability and females have better language ability. The aim of our study was to find out whether there were any differences in sensory modality preferences between male and female I year medical students.

The VARK 7.8 questionnaire in paper pencil format was distributed to the students of I year MBBS. Students were informed that they should complete the form and fill up gender information which was entirely voluntary. The completed forms with gender information was collected randomly from 60 males and 60 females. The completed forms were processed and the learning style preferences based on VARK was determined.

Multimodality was the most dominant preference with 66% of males and an equal percentage of females preferring two or more of the modalities. Chi-square test did not find any significant difference between learning modality preferences in Males and females.

There are no significant differences between males and females with respect to VARK learning style preferences.